Nick Smith
Main Page: Nick Smith (Labour - Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney)Department Debates - View all Nick Smith's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Government have just placed great emphasis on co-operation between the UK and our French NATO partners. Does the Secretary of State believe that this is helped by the reports that they are chopping and changing their plans about which aircraft will go on the new carriers?
Mr Hammond
The collaboration that we have discussed and intend to progress with the French essentially concerns carrier deployment—working together to ensure deployments that make sense and which are coherent when looked at together. It is not about interoperability of aircraft as such. We expect that whatever decision we come to, the co-operation and collaboration that we have been discussing with the French will go ahead and will be an important part of our posture in operating our carrier strike force.