Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:18 pm on 26th January 2023.
I very much welcome this update and the detail that the Minister has provided. It is not often one can say this in the House, but Britain and our allies are now mobilising in earnest for war. After so much international hesitancy, we are finally, nudged on by the UK, beginning to muster the serious hardware that can make a material difference on the battlefield. But we must move from talking about tactics to strategy. Does he agree that this war is no longer about just Ukraine—it is about a widening threat to the west? Does he agree that Putin is now the single most destabilising force in Europe and that the conflict has entered a more complex and dangerous chapter, with major security implications for our own defence posture, particularly the poor state of our land forces? It is unacceptable that our tank numbers have dropped from 900 two decades ago to just 148 today—that must be reviewed.