A day of committees ; three in fact. The first was a sub-committee of the Defence Committee, chaired by Mark Francois, which is looking at procurement. We took oral evidence from four distinguished guest. The first panel consisted of Lucia Retter, Research lead at RAND Europe, Professor John Louth, Independent author and defence analyst and Professor Matt Uttley, Chair in Defence Studies at King’s College London. The second panel only had one contributor, Sir Bernard Gray, former Chief of Defence Materiel and author of Defence Reform. Today we looked at the strengths and failings of DE&S’ current approach to defence procurement and does it deliver value for money to the taxpayer. This interesting session can be seen on Parliament TV. A quick sandwich lunch and then back to CR 16 for another session of the full Defence Committee. This was the final evidence session of the Committee’s Aviation Procurement inquiry. It was an opportunity to question the new Minister, James Cartlidge, on the issues that the Committee had examined in the course of the inquiry. The minister was flanked by Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton KCB, Chief of the Air Staff Designate, and Vice Admiral Richard Thompson, Director General Air, DE&S. At the same time this committee was sitting, the other one I sit one, the European Scrutiny Committee, was taking evidence on ‘PESCO and UK-EU Defence Cooperation’, which was launched on 2 May 2023. The aim of the first session was to act as a general introduction to the EU’s defence policy before and after Brexit, and the extent of UK-EU defence co-operation. We took evidence from Professor Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy Director General, Royal United Services Institute, Luigi Scazzieri, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for European Reform and Professor Gwythian Prins, a leading expert in military strategy and decision making. Currently a member of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategy Advisory Panel and of the Royal Marines advisory Group. The Professor has previously held public service roles at NATO, the UK Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several governments on issues of energy and climate policy. I jumped between the two committees, which were in adjacent rooms, thankfully. Both the Defence and European Committee sessions can also be seen on Parliament TV. In the Chamber, MPs debated the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill.