National Defence committee  Actually, one of our committees, the economic and security committee, is going to be looking at that this year. One of its focuses is the future of the space industry. I used to be the director of the Assembly science and technology committee, and it's an issue that keeps comi

National Defence committee  We actually have—

National Defence committee  The issue of burden-sharing is as old as the alliance itself, and it's been raised repeatedly, obviously by American administrations. There was a particular speech by Secretary Gates, in Brussels, just before he left, under the Obama administration. It's one of those situations

National Defence committee  I don't think the alliance works with sticks as well as it does with carrots, and I don't think anyone would go as far as talking about expulsion or anything like that. In fact, the Wales commitment was made by all the alliance nations. It's not been imposed by anybody. They al

National Defence committee  Cyber will be one of the subjects of one of our reports this year. Absolutely, cyber isn't a pending threat. In terms of cyber, even in my organization we have to deal—I won't say daily, but a lot—with people trying to break in and hack. NATO is extremely active and, by the way,

National Defence committee  Thank you for that. First of all, on the Arctic, by the way, the members of the assembly who are Arctic powers, if you like, have ensured that it features regularly on the assembly's agenda. For example, this year one of our committees is going to be specifically looking at sear

National Defence committee  We do everything we can in that regard. We have several meetings per year where we specifically engage partners from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf. This year alone we've got three visits to the Gulf. We've done Abu Dhabi, we're doing Qatar, and we hope to do Saudi A

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

National Defence committee  Transparency, yes. Actually, that's exactly where we find that NATO is. In fact, whenever we ask for something and say that it's for transparency's sake, they fall all over themselves to be helpful. They recognize the value of the parliamentary organization providing transparency

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