National Defence committee  There isn't a fair way of dealing with this issue. There's a vast body of literature about what you measure and how you can compare it. There were efforts that said, look, we should actually look at what we do in terms of numbers of forces. But how do you compare a nation with a

National Defence committee  There isn't a fair way of doing it that anybody would universally accept. It's good enough. Frankly, some of the contributions are so far out of kilter, it's a pretty good indicator of where more can be done. How do you compare capabilities? You could do that, but you would never

National Defence committee  They did agree. They did agree, and it's as good as any other, if you like. You could argue the merits and demerits of all sorts of others, but this is one that at least you can measure. It's equality of sacrifice, if you like.

National Defence committee  Also, don't forget that they put in 20% of defence investment, which is as important. If you're just spending it on salaries, you're not spending it on equipment. At least it forces you to spend a certain amount on hardware and things that are actually usable in the field. It's

National Defence committee  We've found that NATO has been incredibly supportive of the initiative that our president launched to improve education and awareness about NATO within member countries. It's like delivering that last mile. You can put in all sorts of facilities that are available, but NATO itsel

National Defence committee  We had our annual meeting in Istanbul in 2016. The Turks had to approach that realistically, because it was quite clear that many of our members—which pretty much represent all political parties in the alliance—were expressing very, very, very severe reservations about what was g

National Defence committee  Regarding the policy recommendations, it's unthinkable that we would not get a formal response from the North Atlantic Council these days. For every single policy recommendation that we submit, we get a written response saying, “This is what we think about it and this is what we'

National Defence committee  They can't make it an obligation that they act upon it. I think that would be—

National Defence committee  —asking a little bit too much.

National Defence committee  We started with something called the European reassurance initiative when, of course, our members, particularly in the Baltics, were genuinely frightened about what might happen next after the experience of Ukraine. Now, that's switched. It's now the European deterrence initiativ

National Defence committee  No, they are still doing them.

National Defence committee  Overwhelmingly, it's NATO adaptation to the new security environment. It's also addressing and responding to instability in the south. It's looking forward to the summit, including with regard to what's being done in terms of the burden-sharing debate. How much progress is being

National Defence committee  I only have 10 minutes. Is that right?

National Defence committee  The relationship with NATO is amazingly good. In discussing the relationship between the parliamentary and government counterparts compared to with, for example, in the old days, the Western European Union and OSCE now, both of those had a formally regulated treaty-bound relation

National Defence committee  I think we have to be very careful because defence is a national prerogative, and oversight of defence establishments and national defence policy is by national parliamentarians. If we start saying that we're going to look at NATO and do parliamentary oversights of NATO, then the