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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Will the Minister remind the House how many uniformed armed services personnel will need to leave the service over the next two years under the current plans, and will he tell us why this cannot be done by means of natural wastage rather than redundancies? The [...]

A £ multi million Eurofighter warplane destroyed a second-hand pick up truck in Libya today.  The air strike was called in using high tech smart bombs. "This shows the wisdom of using a £20 Billion weapon systems against [...]

              On Monday I attended the debate on Libya, but decided not to vote. I should explain why.               I of course support the United Nations in its wish to protect civilians in Libya from the barabrism of its government. I could not disagree with the main sentiments of the Commons [...]

This morning, on BBC Breakfast, Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey gave a revealing interview . He speculated that ground troops may be used in Libya and that they may be there for some time: Mr Harvey was also questioned on whether there would be a ground force entering Libya, and whether [...]

Please visit www.fco.gov.uk for updated information. 17 March 2011 ·       We advise against all non essential travel to Tokyo and north eastern Japan given the damage caused by the 11 March earthquake and resulting aftershocks and tsunami. Due to the evolving situation at the Fukushima nuclear facility and potential disruptions to [...]

It’s been a day of wild accusations.    The Commons debate on the Big Society was marked by an assurance by a Tory that it does not included volunteers being asking to conduct brain surgery. But he did paint a nightmare Kafkaesque view of Labour society in which people were forbidden to [...]

My beef with big defence contractors is not that they sell military kit abroad. Nor even that they sometimes appear to have hijacked British foreign policy towards certain states in the interests of their business deals.    It is their influence within Whitehall that seems so malign. Britain’s defence budget is [...]

This blog has been boring on about the scandal that is UK defence procurement - some might say obsessively. I've written about the way that the budget seems to be spent in the interests of the contractors, rather than the armed forces here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. [...]

MoD has run out of money again, so it would seem. Alas, we shouldn't be surprised. As long as we continue to allow a handful of powerful defence contractors to carve up the budget, there will never be enough.Labour's Defence Industrial Strategy deliberately restricts the range of companies [...]

            Yesterday in the debate on UK Parliamentary sovereignty I asked How does a sovereign lose their sovereignty?             Sovereignty is not the same as power. Confusion over this leads to some of the arguments about the EU. Those who favour a federal state say such a state would be more [...]

Big defence contractors have employees on secondment working inside the Ministry of Defence.  Read the Parliamentary answer here. The fact that some of MoD's largest suppliers have their people working inside MoD could, some people might think, suggest that the relationship between customer and supplier is perhaps a little blurred.      Perhaps it is this blurring of [...]

Today’s excellent Treasury committee report is the latest to examine the Ministry of Defence's appalling record of squandering public money, while providing poor kit to our armed forces.   However brilliant the diagnosis, too often such reports propose remedies of the why-can't-we-just-make-MoD-properly-efficient-and-streamline-things variety.  Indeed.  But willing efficiency [...]

    Today’s report from the Public Administration Committee highlights a retreat from Parliamentary reforms. It may well signal a return to the sleaze of the past. In 1995 the Nolan Committee reported on standards in public life. Their introduction on MPs has a familiar ring: “A fall in public confidence in the [...]

Chloe Smith MP will be supporting the 'Make it Marham' Campaign by collecting signatures for the Petition in Norwich this Saturday. You can join her to show your support and sign the petition at: 14.15 – 14.45 NCFC, Carrow Road 15.15 – 16.15 Chapelfield shopping centre Saturday 20th November 2010 An urgent rallying call has [...]

If there is any hope of any honourable conclusion of our presence in Afghanistan we must ensure that we assert a moral superiority of purpose over those we are fighting. Accusations of bad behaviour must be investigated and appropriate action taken if necessary. If accusations are baseless, those accused should [...]

I am going to amend the EDM which is posted below. I'm am toying with the idea of launching a campaign to scrap May 1st as a Bank holiday and replace with Armed Forces Day as the Bank holiday in June. This would seem to be a good way to mark [...]

Today Monday) I am laying down an EDM as the first stage of a campaign I intend to run to raise public awareness and thankfulness for the risks and sacrifice made by those serving in our armed forces. Repetitive negative broadcasting and reporting ... [...]

"We've got a lot of aeroplanes that are ready to do dog fights with the Soviet Union Air Force.  That's not right" says David Cameron. Indeed.  It's time to ensure that our defence budget is spent in the interests of our armed forces and Britain's strategic needs.  Too often, the money [...]

Michael Portillo made an extraordinary appearance on Channel 4 Dispatches last night. He seemed to suggest he’d been against the ruinously expensive Eurofighter project as minister – but caved in to lobbying within a few months. So much for conviction politics, eh? This might seem like a minor footnote [...]

“Every contract that could be given to ...BAE Systems, was given to it” - Mark Hendrick MP, House of Commons debate. [...]