Readiness is about acceptable risk. The decisions on what risks to take are ultimately political (based partly on military advice) rather than solely military or parliamentary decisions. Ministers will also inevitably need to reach judgments about the availability of information regarding threats and the UK’s readiness to respond to those threats, and these judgments may change as the threat landscape changes. However, Parliament’s role and our role in particular is to hold Ministers to account for their actions. We cannot fulfil this role without adequate information, along the lines that was available to our predecessors. At present there is no regular mechanism which allows us to scrutinise ministerial decisions on readiness and their impact on risk.