Integrated Review

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have made representations to the Government in Addis Ababa to de-escalate in Ethiopia. We continue to make our points with them. This package will help us to step up our commitment to Africa and, as the hon. Gentleman may recall, when I was Foreign Secretary and now under my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, we are opening up embassies, opening up UK representation across Africa, and this package will help us to support that.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I thank both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor for finding a way to provide this long-term financial stability for defence, despite the huge financial pressures that covid has brought upon us this year. Getting our defence funding on a sound footing affords us the chance to ensure that it can be genuinely resilient, so does the Prime Minister agree that ensuring that we get going at pace on the shipbuilding commitments he has set out is critical not only for the next generation of Royal Navy ships to be in service as soon as possible, but because the UK, in building ships and boats across the four nations of the Union that they defend, can lead the world in adapting to green maritime technologies?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is completely right because not only are we massively expanding shipbuilding with the two frigate production lines that I have described, the five Type 31s at Rosyth and the six Type 26s in Govan, and we are also committed to the Type 32, but we want to be in the lead globally—as she and I have discussed, and I thank her for all the work she has done to champion shipbuilding and the Royal Navy—in clean, green marine technologies so that our ships are also emitting less carbon. That is perfectly feasible.