Articles

Early Spring is now upon us and the days are thankfully starting to get lighter again.

You’ve got to take your hat off to the Secretary of State for Defence. With speculation rising to fever pitch ahead of the imminent publication of the Integrated Review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, hardly a day goes by without yet another story appearing in the national press about what is being cut from the Royal Navy, Army or Royal Air Force.

As the Armed Forces Bill weaves its way through Parliament, MPs must make the most of this vital opportunity to reflect on the strengths and needs of our Armed Forces by ensuring that this new legislation is fit for purpose.

I write this during yet another lockdown. Given the time of year, this seems worse than before, for my own family too, and I feel for everyone who has been directly affected by the impact of Covid-19, particularly those who have lost jobs, livelihoods and loved ones. 

2020 has been awful for so many.  Every time it gets worse, you hope to wake up as if from some bad dream.  But no, with almost 70,000 excess deaths this year from Covid-19, the nightmare is real, and it is impossible to conceive of how much worse this would have been without the restrictions in place. 

These are strange times in Westminster. One of the senior MPs told me last week that he cannot recall a more bizarre period in politics but like me, he remains confident that we will soon see the back of 2020 by seeing off the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a veteran, it was a privilege to speak in the 2nd Reading of the Overseas Operations Bill.

Boris Johnson’s stark admission in the Commons yesterday that “we have reached a perilous turning point”, and the imposition of tighter measures from Thursday are a veritable game-changer in the Government’s strategy against Covid-19.

One senior colleague told me recently that he could not recall a Summer where he had worked continuously throughout Recess.