James Cartlidge

But the government has deferred the decision on how many subs it will commit to buying until now, 2028.

There was something interesting in that story, which was first published in The Telegraph, which is something I actually wanted to specifically flag rather than the overall story, which was that Wes Streeting, the defense secretary, wrote to his conservative shadow, James Cartlidge, And he said, the DIP sets out our intention to buy up to 12 SSN Orcas submarines, but a decision on exact hull numbers does not need to be taken at this stage.

The program is currently midway through its design phase, and we anticipate that the number of submarines will be confirmed before the end of this phase in 2028.

The program is currently midway through its design phase.

This is Talk Breakfast.

Let's speak with James Cartlidge, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence.

James, good morning to you.

Let me just throw that point at you about AI.

Thank you, sir.

Great to have you with us.

James Cartlidge, shadow secretary of state for defense, live from College Green.

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And it was a, a huge success, and we saw the Armed Forces Covenant and the Employer Recognition Scheme as tools of that relationship.

Now, their budget hasn't actually increased, and indeed, James Cartlidge asked a written parliamentary question to the minister, Calvin Bailey, about what is the budget for the Strategic Reserve, and the answer came back, there isn't one.

So straight away, there's an issue there around budget of the Strategic Reserve.

But you already have a unit at the MOD set up to manage this.

And the amount of money that you'd see paid in those housing benefits to families would be significantly reduced.

And you heard James Cartlidge, the Shadow Defense Secretary, talking about this this morning.

Being quite open and honest about the fact that these were trade-offs and actually this question about whether or not you'd be happy to raise defence on the back of cutting welfare was something the Tories now are happy to just have a really big fight and argument over and I think part of the bad enough gambit here is a confidence that Labour really isn't comfortable doing quite the same.

And because I think we're seeing a delay in action on welfare from this Labour government, in part because they want to get it right, but also because it's an extremely difficult thing to do.

Our little friend, pocket-sized Pff- Chris Philp, he remains as shadow home secretary.

James Cartlidge remains as shadow defense secretary.

Neil O'Brien remains as policy renewal minister.

Mm-hmm.