Carrier Strike Group Deployment

Joy Morrissey Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

On the carbon footprint and the environment, there are a number of initiatives right across Government—as shipbuilding tsar, I am part of steering that—to try to invest in alternative energy or alternative fuels. There is a real prize in shipping if we can help to lead the pack in that—Norway is active in this—because one of the big polluters around the world is shipping, and if we can change the fuel that ships use and so make a difference, we can really help British shipping to steal a march on some of its competitors and open up many of the skills.

I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman about the cost, because there are marginal and real costs, and all the different costs set out. Obviously, the carrier is paid for, deployed, fuelled and ready to go, but it would be anyhow, as are the salaries of all the sailors and Marines on board and everything else. I will write to him with what we estimate the additional cost to be. Of course, I give him one health warning that—as I was always taught as a soldier—no plan survives the very first contact, so who knows where we will be at the end of the year, if they are diverted and we do something else? But I will tell him the details as we get them.

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend said that the carrier strike group will be NATO’s first fifth generation carrier strike capability. Does he agree that fifth generation technology is hugely significant for our modern-day armed forces?

[Mr Wallace]

Yes, absolutely. One of the traits of the generation is situation awareness and its ability to process all that data and stealth, but, also, these generations do not stand still. We are already committed to a sixth generation. FCAS, the next fighter programme for the RAF, is absolutely about the sixth generation. One of the challenges is that we cannot sit still for very long before somebody is trying to get a strategic advantage, but I am confident that, at this moment in time, the carrier and her partnership with the F-35 will present a formidable capability around the world.