Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2025
I think that we are not taking our own defence seriously by not considering what we need to do in terms of restocking our munitions. My point is highlighted by the fact that treating the submarine welding facility as a munitions project is false. Submarines are not munitions.
The issue is not just about Ukraine—it is about the rest of the world. Look at the developments in the South China Sea, where China is increasingly testing internationally recognised boundaries. More recently, the situation in Iran is of grave concern. All that requires us to reflect on our defences and our defence requirements.
The issue is not just about traditional and orthodox military threats. In the past two years, the UK has received 90,000 cyberattacks from foreign actors, almost 90 of which have been of national significance. That is why the UK Government has brought forward the strategic defence review, with a commitment of a spending increase to 2.7 per cent of GDP, and that is why the defence industry in Scotland needs our support and our investment across every area. We do not want to split the sector neatly between reserved and devolved areas. That is explicit in the strategic defence review. The whole-society approach and, critically, the mobilisation of our industrial base will require devolved levers to be pulled.
To make a brief point on the Green amendment and the point about human rights checks, these things are not incompatible. If we want to increase our defence spending and support our allies, we need to enhance our human rights checks, because it is critical that we understand where our spending and arms are going and how those arms are being used. Those things are not incompatible. We cannot support the Green amendment nor the SNP amendment because, far from diversifying away from defence—