Neil Parish
Main Page: Neil Parish (Conservative - Tiverton and Honiton)Department Debates - View all Neil Parish's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(14 years ago)
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Dr Fox
The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) just said that we are all communautaire, but I suppose there has to be an exception to every rule. If both nations are operating a single carrier, there will be times when both carriers are available as part of our NATO obligations, and times when none is available unless we come to an arrangement that enables us to have a sensible refit policy that ensures that one is always available. That would not mean that either nation can force the other to do something it did not want to do, but it would increase the chance of having some capability as opposed to none.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement on better co-operation with France, which makes military and economic sense. Will he look at the fine print on opening our markets in procurement, because my knowledge of the French is that opening up markets is not their greatest strong point?