Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Pawsey Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. The actual mental health outcomes of service personnel are exceptionally good, but there are service personnel and former service personnel who do need a bit of extra support. The investment of £2 million in the veterans gateway is aimed at helping and supporting veterans and service leavers to access the type of support that they best need once they have left the armed forces.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

2. What assessment he has made of the potential merits of using new and developing technologies to support the UK’s defence capability.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Gavin Williamson)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his time and for the opportunity to see the excellent Manufacturing Technology Centre in his constituency just the other week, which demonstrated to me that emerging technologies present greater opportunities but also more complex threats than ever before.

[Mark Pawsey]

In addition to the great work at the MTC, does the Secretary of State agree with me that an excellent example of new technology supporting military capability is the electric drive systems using anti-vibration technology being installed on our marine vessels, which were both developed in Rugby and built in Rugby, and does he agree with me that they represent a great future for British manufacturing?

[Gavin Williamson]

Such technologies do represent a fantastic future for British manufacturing. If we look at the success that the Type 26 has had not just with the eight Type 26 frigates that are going to be built in Britain, but in securing orders in Australia and Canada, we can see that it demonstrates this kind of technology is not only designed in Britain, but should always be built in Britain.