Luke Pollard

I thank the hon. Member. One of the hallmarks of a good defence debate in the House, certainly since I was elected in 2017, is that we have more in common across the parties and share a desire to get to the right solution. I am pleased that there is often less party politics in defence debates, because it is so important that we get to the right solution and do not seek to blame or attack. That does not mean that there is no party politics, but we are certainly united on this issue in wanting to get to the right solution. On the hon. Member’s point about culture change, I entirely agree that it is not enough just to change the process. I speak frequently in the MOD about the necessity of culture change to adjust our processes and to learn the lessons from Ukraine to be faster and more agile. There are things that we can do and that we are undertaking, but there is more to be done. In respect of the senior responsible officer recommendations, which featured in particular in the Sheldon review into previous problems with the Ajax programme, those have been implemented, and there have been big improvements in the leadership provided on single programmes by the SRO reform, but I will not be able to speculate on what will happen here until we get the results of those investigations. However, I will update the House when that happens.