Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

My hon. Friend and I completely agree on this matter. We are going to invest in and increase the number of defence attachés around the world. We are going to invest in better comms for them, and we have already started the process of improving their curriculum, so that they are better trained and more knowledgeable. I have also instructed the director of defence people to make a separate career stream for those people, so that they can start at junior level and follow it all the way through to become a professional in a certain part of the world, speaking the language, understanding the importance of inter-regional actions and therefore really adding value and being able to complement the UK’s diplomatic effort and potentially other efforts around the world to provide stability. In that way, we can hopefully get in early and not end up in a place where we have to go and fight a conflict when things have failed.