NATO, America and UK Security: An evening with the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Rt Hon Dr Julian Lewis MP

Date

Thursday, 16th February 2017

Time

6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Thursday 16th February: NATO, America and UK Security: An evening with the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Rt Hon Dr Julian Lewis MP

The Officers of the Vincent Square ward invite you to join the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, the Rt Hon Dr Julian Lewis MP for Drinks and Nibbles, on the evening of Thursday 16th February.

Dr Lewis has been Member of Parliament for New Forest East in Hampshire since the 1997 general election. He was elected Chairman of the Defence Select Committee in June 2015.

You can read more about the important work of the Defence Select Committee here.

We will be meeting in the Chapel Meeting Rooms at the newly refurbished Grange Wellington Hotel, overlooking Vincent Square, SW1P 2PA.

£30 per person.

A limited number of tickets at £20 per head are available for students and those aged under 25.

All ticket sales are subject to our standard terms and conditions, which you can read here.

Events

Julian Lewis is the Chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. He was elected to this post by his fellow MPs in June 2015, shortly after being elected as the Conservative MP for New Forest East, in Hampshire, for the fifth time since 1997. In September 2010, the Prime Minister appointed him to the Intelligence and Security Committee for five years and, in October 2014, he was additionally elected as a member of the Defence Select Committee. From November 2002 until May 2010, he was the Shadow Defence Minister for the Royal Navy, the nuclear deterrent and strategic issues. He held this post continuously, except for a period as Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office between September 2004 and the May 2005 General Election.

Julian was appointed to the Privy Council in March 2015.

Currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow of the Centre for Defence Studies, in the Department of War Studies, King's College, London, Julian read Philosophy and Politics at Oxford before specialising in Strategic Studies. He was awarded his doctorate in 1981 and a book based on his research, Changing Direction: British Military Planning for Post-war Strategic Defence 1942–47, was published in 1988. A second edition, based on newly-declassified archives, was published by Frank Cass in 2003, and as a University paperback by Routledge in 2008.

Julian's latest book, published by Pen & Sword in 2011, is Racing Ace, the story of the Great War and Schneider Trophy pilot, Samuel Kinkead DSO DSC* DFC*, who died in 1928 in a forerunner of the Spitfire whilst attempting to break the World Air Speed Record. 'Kink' is buried at Fawley in New Forest East. It was selected by Andrew Roberts, in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, as one of his three favourite 'Books of the Year'.

Throughout the 1980s, Julian was a leading opponent of unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom. In Parliament, he continues to pursue the retention and renewal of the British strategic nuclear deterrent, the Trident Successor programme.

Although a supporter of humanitarian military campaigns in the past, Julian was one of the most prominent opponents of British intervention in the Syrian civil war. Had the motion in favour of the principle of military action not been defeated (by a margin of only 13 votes) on 29 August 2013, he believes that the United States also would have launched an attack to bring down the Syrian government – with gravely adverse consequences for Western strategic interests.

Cities of London & Westminster

NATO, America and UK Security: An evening with the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Rt Hon Dr Julian Lewis MP