Ajax Programme

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, the report to which she referred was published prior to the injection of the additional £24 billion earlier this year. As a result of that, we will be publishing an equipment plan that will add up. I recognise that that will be for the first time in many years, and under successive Governments, but we will have a plan of which we can all be proud.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

As a proud member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, I am delighted with the £24 billion investment in our armed forces that was set out in the integrated review. As my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) just said, that investment also presents a great opportunity to grow exports. So can the Minister confirm what progress he may have made with colleagues in the Department for International Trade and what opportunities he may expect will arise in respect of armoured fighting vehicles?

[Jeremy Quin]

That is a positive point on which to end these exchanges—if, indeed, this is the end Mr Speaker. It is absolutely right that we should look at the land industrial strategy to see what we can secure for this country. In terms of armoured fighting vehicles, we have not only Ajax but Boxer, and there is additional work on our Challenger 3 main battle tank. We have a lot of capabilities in the land domain, as we have in respect of exporting ships of various descriptions and the fantastic work that we continue to do on Typhoon and the development of our future combat air system. There is huge potential for us not only to defend our country and keep us secure but to offer huge prosperity benefits to all the people of the UK.