Ralph Lucas

Kennedy should face immediate disciplinary proceedings. Even if gender ideology is a protected belief, this is not an acceptable manifestation.

Today we launch the 2030 Prosperity Alliance. Chaired by Rick Haythornthwaite, Chair of NatWest Group, and Paul Johnson CBE as Chief Economist & Head of the Secretariat, it brings together FTSE chairs and leading thinkers to help chart a path for long-term prosperity in the UK.

Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead try to realise the truth that there is no spoon. Do not talk about reforming the civil service because it is not a single organisation. It is multiple organisations, most of which serve a function. As such you have to be precise in identifying which of them work, and which of them don't, and decide the levels of acceptable dysfunction for each. They are bureaucracies because bureaucracy is how humans organise their administrative affairs. We can no more abolish bureaucracy than we can abolish gravity. Looking at your area, defence, even the MoD is not a singular organisation. It comprises of DIO, and things like the Submarine Delivery Agency. DIO, as I understand it, does a pretty good job. SDA does not. But they are two very different organisations. One does fairly mandate routine work, which is what bureaucracy does well. SDA is charged with delivering expensive, one-off complex machines amid a skills shortage, capacity crunches and lack of infrastructure. We can dig in to the procurement contracts and complain about those, and there's room for greater scrutiny, but big, expensive and complex machine have big, expensive and complex problems that don't play nicely with predetermined timetables. As such, we have to ask if we can afford to be in this game at all if we can't flex the unanticipated expenditure. Meanwhile, I am not one to gripe about defence procurement waste because I can't point to a time when it was ever good. It's symptomatic of definition problems and constantly shifting priorities. Just as we finished converting the military industrial complex to serve middle eastern counter insurgency wars, we pivoted back to temperate battlefields, and then virtually overnight the politicians decided we need ships more than we need tanks. The problem I see is that we're buying Rolls Royce kit that's too expensive to lose, and too few in number to be effective, but the inherent risk to change is ending up with large numbers of units that aren't useful at all when long term storage is a non-option. Much smarter men than me (you included) have tried to square this circle and all have failed. I think it stems from a much more serious conceptual problem where our politicians forget that Britain is no longer a world power, and our self-image writes cheques we can't cash. When I set about writing a defence policy I started by correcting the base assumption, and set out a hybrid model of training, logistics and special forces, coupled with elastic civilian reserves - recognising that we can't afford a standing army. Regardless of what I think, though, it's a political problem, not a problem with the organisational workings of the MoD. So the short answer to how you fix it is... you don't. You simply have to recognise the nature of the beast. Our forces and our procurement system only really work well when we know exactly what it is we're doing (UOR system worked well in Afghanistan) but you can only replicate that on a constant basis if you have a crystal ball and budgets that aren't in competition with other strategic priorities. My point is that most of our problems are conceptual political problems and they aren't solved with accountancy. Much the same can be said of the NHS.

This is a cowardly attack on the Jewish community. I am in close contact with the police who are stepping up patrols in the area, and I urge anyone with information to come forward. Londoners will never be cowed by this kind of hatred and intimidation.