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Tom Tugendhat

Tom Tugendhat

Conservative — Tonbridge

Speaking in the House of Commons on 20 November 2025

Debate

Russian Ship Yantar

Contribution

I welcome many of the Minister’s comments. I would add my enormous thanks to the intelligence personnel who assisted not only in zeroing in on the ship but in understanding its capabilities a long time before anybody else arrived on the scene. As a fellow former military assistant in the MOD, may I raise one point with the Minister? We have both seen Governments of every colour making decisions and statements that sound good on the day before the reality of a lack of kit becomes clear. I saw that under Blair and Brown, and again, yes, under Governments of my own stripe. I am sure that the Minister, too, saw that under them all. I raise this because the reality is that the world has changed. We are much, much more vulnerable today than we have been, but we have fewer ships at sea, fewer men in uniform and fewer planes in the air than we have had at any time. Yet the aspiration for the 3% is still “by the end of the Parliament” or “over the next five years”, and always on the never-never. He must be very careful, as I am sure he is hugely aware, that he is there to change defence, not to apologise for failure.
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