Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jesse Norman and Luke Pollard(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Luke Pollard)
Let me be absolutely clear that GCAP is an important programme, as the Prime Minister has stated. That is why the Defence Secretary hosted his Japanese and Italian counterparts within weeks of taking office. Progress continues, alongside the strategic defence review, with more than 3,500 people employed on future combat air.
Jesse Norman
I apologise if I was hypnotised by your gaze, Mr Speaker.
I worry about the Government’s grip on strategy all together. First, they have given away the Chagos islands before the strategic defence review. Now they are putting at risk the global combat air programme by including it within the SDR. Is the Minister aware of the extreme efforts that our partners in Italy and Japan, visited by the Defence Committee in the last Parliament, have made to discharge their side of the bargain—in Japan’s case for the first time since the second world war in international procurement outside the USA? What measures is he taking to reassure them about the centrality and importance of the programme?
Luke Pollard
The Defence Secretary has clear instructions from the manifesto that Britain is to be better defended with a Labour Government. That is why within two weeks of taking office the Prime Minister had commissioned Lord Robertson to conduct the strategic defence review. The Prime Minister, the Defence Secretary and I have all made it clear that GCAP is an important programme. Not only do we have an amazing workforce working on it but I am pleased to tell the House that last month the UK ratified the GCAP convention, the international treaty that sets up the GCAP International Government Organisation. We will continue to make progress.
Strategic Road Network: South West
Debate between Jesse Norman and Luke Pollard(7 years, 4 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Jesse Norman
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will discuss the A303 and Stonehenge later in my speech.
The road investment strategy is the biggest upgrade to our strategic roads—our motorways and major A roads—in a generation. It will see the addition of more than 1,300 extra lane miles to our busiest roads. The schemes cover every region of England; in the two years since 2015, 12 major schemes have opened for traffic and 16 more have started construction.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree with me and with Conservative-run Plymouth City Council that it is time that we continued that investment in our strategic road network by extending the M5 from Exeter to the Tamar bridge?
Jesse Norman
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that question. The answer is that we have a number of funds available and we look forward very much to the submission of bids, which will be given the full scrutiny that they deserve and merit.
Let me turn to the questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset. He started by referring to the A39, which I will touch on for a second. He will be aware that that is a local road, but as he also knows, the Government recently announced that from 2020, under the new roads fund that we have set up, which is entirely funded by vehicle excise duty—that is a tremendous innovation, or rather a move back to the future for our road network—we will segregate what we consider to be a major road network investment programme. I think that the A39 will be eligible to be funded under that programme. Once the consultation has been done and work is under way to programme that investment, my hon. Friend and local authorities will be absolutely welcome—indeed, they will be invited—to submit bids. I am aware of his strong feelings, rose-tinted spectacles or no, and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) about the importance of dualling that road in both directions.
Overall, the Government are investing heavily in the road network in the south-west and have committed some £2 billion to major schemes through the road investment strategy. Later this year, we will announce the preferred route for the A303 Stonehenge tunnel, which is a very significant project in its own right, and for the A358 Taunton to Southfields and A303 Sparkford to Ilchester schemes. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset has particular concerns—concerns that he expressed with considerable pungency—about the route that the A358 should take into Taunton.