The deputy leader of the Reform party has triggered a row by insinuating that RAF Brize Norton was not secure because the station commander, a female group captain, had a background in HR.
Richard Tice MP, responding to protestors breaking into the base last week, posted: “Kept safe and secure by an HR manager … well done folks” with a link to the officer’s biography and a screenshot of the officer’s profile.
Labour MP for North East Derbyshire Louise Jones condemned Richard Tice in response. She told parliament on Tuesday: “Certain pathetic little people took this incident and decided to come out of the woodwork and criticise people for doing their job whilst being female.”
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Jones, who served in Afghanistan with the British Army, added: “I know as a woman serving in the armed forces, every opportunity that has been given to women, we have earned, through serving on operations, proving time and time again, we are worthy to be there.
“I was very conscious when I was serving that I had to be perfect, because any fault or flaw that I showed would not be held just against me, but against all the women that I was serving with.”
However, Tice, in response Jones’s comments, doubled down on his allegations, saying “woke weakness from Lib Dem and Labour MPs is a national embarrassment”.
He told the BBC: “What is pathetic is allowing an HR manager to be responsible for security at one of our most important UK bases.”
At Wednesday’s Question Time in the Commons, Labour MP Calvin Bailey said Tice’s criticism “brings disgrace upon him and his party”. He added that RAF bases had suffered from under-investment over the past decade.
Labour’s deputy leader joined the criticism on Tice, adding: “The attack on RAF Brize Norton was disgraceful, but what was even more disgraceful is Reform blaming the commanding officer and accomplished woman who has served her country, rather than the criminals that were responsible.
“That’s not leadership, Mr Speaker, but we shouldn’t expect anything better from the party of the Putin apologists.”
Group Captain Louise Henton joined the RAF in 2001, and took command of the air base, the main hub for the RAF’s transport and air-to-air refuelling aircraft, in 2024.
Her RAF biography states she has completed command and staff appointments in personnel, media, recruitment, programmes and plans, and human resources. She was recently responsible for delivery of the modernisation of career management practices and protocol within the RAF.
A Ministry of Defence source called the “woke” allegations “nonsense”.
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