Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between John Healey and Richard Holden

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

Quite simply, our job as the UK is to support Ukraine in its fight and, if and when it decides to talk, to support it in any negotiations. It is the Ukrainians who are fighting; it is the Ukrainians who decide when to start talking; and it is for the Ukrainians to decide on what terms they may start talking.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to ensure that SMEs are able to participate in AUKUS procurement.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)]

The AUKUS partnership will create new contract opportunities for hundreds of small and medium-sized firms. It will create 7,000 new jobs both in UK shipyards and across the UK supply chain.

[Mr Holden]

As the Secretary of State knows, under the defence equipment plan about half of MOD expenditure is on equipment, with around 40% of that going overseas. What impact does the Secretary of State think that the Government’s abolition of business property relief and the massive increase in national insurance will have on UK SMEs’ ability to compete in the defence sector with our AUKUS allies following the previous Government’s signing of that agreement?

[John Healey]

It is certainly the case, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly recognises, that in government the Conservatives were too often largely blind to where British firms were based and to where the contracts that they were ready to award went. This Government have come into power committed not just to strengthening UK security but to boosting the UK economy. That means designing, making and buying more in Britain.