Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

We are grateful for the work of Cammell Laird on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, and the company continues to perform on our power improvement project for the Type 45s. It does a good job by us.

Decisions on steel are made by our primes, but the hon. Lady is right. The vast majority of the steel used in the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers was British, and more than half, by value, of the steel used in our Type 26s comes from the UK. Given the extra shipbuilding signalled via yesterday’s Command Paper, I am confident that there will be further opportunities for British steel in the years ahead.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab) [V]]

As we have heard, defence procurement must be about supporting our own strategically important defence manufacturing industry and protecting skilled jobs, as many countries do around the world. There can be no greater ambassadors for global Britain than our Red Arrows. Ministers have previously said that the current Red Arrows fleet of Hawk trainers, built at Brough just outside Hull in the 1970s, have an out-of-service date of 2030. Will we get a decision on the renewal of that fleet over the next few years?

[Jeremy Quin]

The right hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that the Red Arrows are safe, and the current out-of-service date remains 2030. I have no plans that I can currently share with her on what we will do in respect of an upgrade. That means not that one is not going to happen, but just that at the moment I do not have any plans and 2030 is a little distant. It is, though, something to which I will turn my mind.