Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jesse Norman and Luke Pollard

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.