FOR MORE DETAILED SUMMARIES OF ALL OF THE DEFENCE COMMITTEE REPORTS IN THESE TWO PARLIAMENTS, PLEASE SEE INDIVIDUAL PRESS NOTICES IN THIS SECTION OF THE WEBSITE

Key Reports

• Shifting the Goalposts? Defence Expenditure and the 2% Pledge, published in April 2016, which concluded that the Government had met the minimum 2% NATO guideline only by counting "several significant items not previously included when calculating defence expenditure", although doing so in accordance with NATO rules. The report set out, in detailed Annexes, the decline in UK expenditure on Defence as a proportion of GDP since the mid-1950s in comparison with that on Welfare, Health and Education. It also led to the subsequent adoption by the Defence Committee of a target of 3% of GDP to be spent on Defence, as in the mid-1990s. In July 2019, the Committee published an Update to Shifting the Goalposts?, which confirmed that defence expenditure had declined in successive years to 1.9% (2014–15), then 1.8% (2015–16, 2016–17 and 2017–18), when "calculated on a historically consistent basis". Under the more generous NATO rules, the corresponding figures were 2.2% (2014–15), then 2.1% (2015–16, 2016–17 and 2017–18).
• An Acceptable Risk? The Use of Lariam by Military Personnel, published in May 2016, which led to a significant reduction in the use of the anti-malarial drug mefloquine, and to the enforcement of stringent requirements before its prescription, on account of possible severe side-effects in some cases.
• UK Military Operations in Syria and Iraq, published in September 2016, which revealed the great disparity between the large number of airstrikes being carried out in Iraq, where the UK was campaigning in support of substantial indigenous government ground forces, and the far lower total undertaken in Syria, where the UK could find only limited ground forces to support.
• Open Source Stupidity – The Threat to the BBC Monitoring Service, published in December 2016, which strongly criticised the BBC's plan to close the dedicated headquarters of the Monitoring Service at Caversham Park, condemned the UK Government's previous decision to end its ring-fenced grant for the Service which had led to this outcome, and predicted that a state-owned Open Source Information Agency might eventually have to be established.
• Investigations into Fatalities in Northern Ireland involving British Military Personnel, published in April 2017, which recommended the enactment of a Statute of Limitations coupled with a truth-recovery process as the best way to prevent the legal persecution of UK Service, Police and Security Personnel, decades after the events in question, whilst offering the best prospect of finding out what had actually happened during the Troubles.
• Sunset for the Royal Marines? The Royal Marines and Amphibious Capability, published in February 2018, which excoriated the heavily trailed suggestion that the amphibious assault ships, HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, would be removed from the Fleet 15 years early as part of the National Security Capability Review. The report described the proposal as "a short-sighted, militarily illiterate manoeuvre totally at odds with strategic reality". After wide publicity, the plan was abandoned and the capability was saved.
• Rash or Rational? North Korea and the Threat it Poses, published in April 2018, which concluded that Kim Jong-un is "ruthless, like other Communist dictators before him, but he is rational" and can be "dissuaded from the use of nuclear weapons by means of a policy of deterrence and containment" though "unlikely to give them up now".
• Lost in Translation? Afghan Interpreters and other Locally Employed Civilians, published in May 2018, which recommended "a looser and more sympathetic approach" to admitting threatened interpreters to the UK, given that it "is impossible to reconcile the generosity of the Redundancy Scheme with the utter failure of the Intimidation Scheme to relocate even a single LEC to the United Kingdom". Subsequently, some liberalisation of the rules for relocation to the UK was introduced.
• Beyond 2 per cent: A Preliminary Report on the Modernising Defence Programme, published in June 2018, which backed the removal of Defence from the "fiscally neutral" National Security Capability Review process – with its threats to impose further cuts on the Armed Forces, such as the deletion of the amphibious assault ships. The report recommended a financial settlement "based on a level of Defence expenditure approaching the figure of 3% of GDP", which would demonstrate that the mantra "Defence is the first duty of Government" could finally be believed.

Defence Committee Innovations

• In addition to those Inquiries carried out by the full Defence Committee under his chairmanship, in 2015 Julian initiated an arrangement for the Defence Sub-Committee to undertake separate individual Inquiries chaired in turn by other members of the Defence Committee. Between 2016 and 2018 the Defence Sub-Committee produced reports on military exercise deaths, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, and Defence in the Arctic.
• In February 2018, Julian and his French counterpart Jean-Jacques Bridey agreed to launch a joint Inquiry by their respective committees into the UK-France future cruise/anti-ship weapon project. It was the first joint Inquiry to be held by a House of Commons Committee and a Committee of a non-UK legislature and reported in December 2018.