Oral Answers to Questions

James Gray Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

For some two decades, NATO’s focus has been largely land-based, particularly in Afghanistan, Iraq and other such hot and dusty places. However, we now acknowledge that the threat will increasingly come in the north Atlantic and Arctic, particularly with the reinvention of the Russian “Bastion” concept, and the Royal Navy and NATO will increasingly have to turn their attention back to that area of threat.

[Mike Penning]

We would all agree that the Royal Navy is capable of doing exactly what we ask it to do. As we are now turning back to eastern Europe, which we thought we had turned away from, with our land and air defences, that is exactly what the Royal Navy will be doing elsewhere.