Oral Answers to Questions

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) [V]]

Some days ago, I read with great interest a piece in The Times saying that the intention is to deploy Royal Navy warships to the high north to safeguard trade routes via the Arctic. Given the limited range of conventionally powered warships, is there a case for relocating warships further north within the United Kingdom?

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that question. First and foremost, I can give him some reassurance that not only are we continuing to move our submarines from the south to the north to invest in basing in Scotland—for submarine basing, and submarines pose just as lethal a threat to our adversaries as any surface fleet—but we continue to patrol the high north, recently in the Barents sea, and earlier in the year when we returned for the first time since the cold war, joining NATO allies to make sure that those vital trade routes are invested in. From my point of view, the key place for a ship is at sea doing its job on operations. The bases are very important, but let us remember that the way we protect our coast is by being out at sea.