Fred Thomas

Fred Thomas

Labour — Plymouth Moor View

Speaking in the House of Commons on 2 June 2025

Debate

Strategic Defence Review

Contribution

I strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s support and his leadership in this time of increased threats. We saw over the weekend that Ukraine had managed to destroy, it says, as many as 40 Russian bombers deep inside Russia, with a value, it would say, of £5 billion. That is almost as much as we are raising the defence budget by. We have to get after innovation, and this SDR does that. In particular, I want to ask the Secretary of State about page 59, which talks about “rapid commercial exploitation”. It mentions the need to “pull latest technology into operations”, and to “unlock private equity and venture capital”. My question is this: do we need to change the commercial competition laws within the civil service to allow that to happen, or can it already happen?

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