Shipbuilding Strategy

Paul Sweeney Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Clarity around the role, capabilities and market for the Type 31 is absolutely critical in building a strong case—a marketing dossier—that says, “British Members of Parliament support this ship and will actively go out and sell it,” because I am concerned that we cannot even advocate for the Type 31 for UK military use, let alone military use for those abroad.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that an increasing pattern in the procurement of ships around the world for naval purposes is that the proposition for bidders, such as Fincantieri and BAE Systems, is that those ships will be part of an industrial offer to the customer country, in that they will be built in their country, so the potential for build in the UK for export is extremely limited, and part of the competitive drive is to move that work into the country purchasing the ships as part of an industrial offer?

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend perfectly sums up where this is going. It is clear that we need to look at what those jobs will be. Will they just be in design, or will they be in build in the UK?

We need to recognise that the Royal Navy needs to sell the best in-class version of the Type 31 if it is to be a compelling export product; it should be a floating showcase, an example par excellence, not a cut-back, scaled-down, bargain-basement, cheap as possible, poorly-armed, combat-light, barely acceptable platform. We need clarity on whether the export version will be built here or abroad. Britain is building ships. Britain is building corvettes and offshore patrol vessels. Babcock is building the Irish navy OPVs at Appledore: the Samuel Beckett-class OPV is lightly equipped, but capable. BAE Systems is building OPVs: the Batch 2 river-class ships and the Khareef class for Oman. They have similar armaments, but with the ability to add Exocets and a medium helicopter. Those ships could well form the basis for the Type 31 Arrowhead or Leander-class options—extended OPVs, rather than frigates in their own right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East mentioned customers and where they will be. Australia and Canada are looking to procure new frigates in the coming months, but they are more in the market for a Type 26 all-rounder anti-submarine warfare frigate, rather than Type 31s. I appreciate that the Minister has inherited someone else’s homework and ambitions, but where will the 40 export orders come from and can the Type 31 really win 40 orders? I am naturally cautious about suspiciously round numbers, and this shipbuilding strategy suggests not only a suspiciously round £250 million per ship, but that there will be 40 exports. As aspirations go, it is good to be bold, but I would prefer us to be realistic about the delivery of this ambition, especially against the backdrop of post-Brexit uncertainty and volatility in the value of sterling.

As with the national security review, I fear that the national shipbuilding strategy puts the cart before the horse. We know the price tag, but not the capabilities. We know the final bill, but not what foes will be faced, what waters will be patrolled or what role it will have. Clarity is our ally if we are to make a strategy that is truly joined up and deliverable. In very uncertain times for our armed forces, this strategy should offer us hope of long-term thinking. I say to the Minister that the paralysis and the pitched battles of the national security review are understandable, but they do not have to lead to the paralysis announcements from the MOD.

I encourage the Minister to announce the base porting arrangements for the Type 26s and the Type 31s, providing clarity for future investment in base ports. Devonport offers a genuine world-class base, as he would expect me to say. I also encourage him to announce that the fleet support ship contract will be open to UK bids, and that no UK shipbuilder will be discouraged from entering by the MOD in order to curry favour for other contracts, especially the Type 31. I also encourage the Minister to announce that the social, economic and employment impact of the contracts will be assessed as part of the contract decision making process. Bring forward greater detail about the Type 31—its capabilities, roles and operations—and be clear about how it will be built in the UK.

There is a huge opportunity to be ambitious here, an opportunity to build and sustain a revitalised shipbuilding industry providing good, well paid and high-skilled employment across the country, backing British supply chain jobs, creating apprenticeships and, importantly, providing the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service with the ships they need for Britain’s sea power to rule the waves once again. A strong defence is worth fighting for, and we know that a strong defence cannot be done on the cheap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate, Ms McDonagh. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for his comprehensive contribution, in which he outlined the key concerns about the national shipbuilding strategy, and the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) for outlining his longer term perspective on the attrition of the capability of the Royal Navy’s frigate and destroyer fleet, which the national shipbuilding strategy ought to aspire to address as an outcome.

I first encountered the man who wrote the report that spurred the creation of the national shipbuilding strategy, John Parker, about three years ago when he attended Glasgow University to deliver a speech on his history of working in the shipbuilding industry. He had a great reputation as a managing director at Harland and Wolff shipbuilders in the 1980s, where he started as an apprentice and grew up through the ranks. There was an international discussion about the long-term decline of British capability, from the global world leader in the shipbuilding industry that it once was to a marginal player now even in Europe, never mind the rest of the world.

I asked him three years ago when I was working at BAE Systems what his greatest regret was in his career. He stood up and said, “My greatest regret is that Europe is building 90% of the world’s cruise ships, and Britain, with such a great heritage of building world-beating ocean liners and passenger ships, is building none. There are high-wage, highly equipped shipyards in Europe building these vessels, and Britain isn’t building one of them.”

As managing director of Harland and Wolff when it was under the ownership of the British Shipbuilders Corporation—the industry was nationalised until the late 1980s—he recognised the emerging market for cruise ships, which were once again becoming a popular recreational pursuit. Harland and Wolff developed proposed designs for cutting-edge new cruise ships and went to the Government for funding to build them for Carnival, now the biggest cruise company in the world, but the Government said that they were not interested in the design. They wanted to hold a fire sale, get rid of the assets and remove shipbuilding from public ownership. They were not interested in any further investment in what they saw as a dying industry.

In the very same year—1987, the year before Harland and Wolff and Govan shipyard were sold off—Meyer Werft in Germany, a family-owned business, got funding from the German state investment bank to build a completely new, undercover shipyard and then the world’s first modern cruise ship. Today, that shipyard dominates the global market for cruise ship and complex shipbuilding in Europe, building about two 100,000-plus-tonne ships every year. That contrasting approach is symptomatic of a broader malaise that we face when it comes to industrial policy and planning in Britain.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the hon. Gentleman outline what the devastating economic consequences were of that decision on cities such as ours, Glasgow, as well as Belfast and elsewhere in the UK?

[Mr Sweeney]

The impact was absolutely devastating, and we saw the wider impact in Govan as well, which was a commercial shipyard up until 1999 when Kvaerner pulled out. That Norwegian oil company rebuilt the yard in the early 1990s for commercial oil tankers and gas carriers. The result of that collapse was disastrous. Sir John Parker said that just as we had got British shipbuilders match-fit, ready to compete, the rug was pulled from under them. Just as the industry was ready to re-enter the market and be a globally competitive player, it was wrecked. That is the sad legacy of the collapse of British merchant shipbuilding to the point where we are entirely reliant today upon the Ministry of Defence to sustain what is left of British shipbuilding capability. That is partly why I am concerned about the national shipbuilding strategy, if it is restricted in its entirety to naval shipbuilding and not the wider issue of how we re-establish a market foothold in commercial shipbuilding. The two are intrinsically linked.

If we are to achieve a competitive advantage we ought to broaden our horizons and re-establish how we deliver a resurgence in British commercial shipbuilding capability. That was Sir John Parker’s biggest regret. That is what drove his frustration at that time, and a lot of that is what underpins the recommendations in his report. He talks about a vicious cycle of changing requirements, which the right hon. Member for New Forest East mentioned, and a year-zero approach every time we have a new MOD shipbuilding programme which duplicates effort and introduces unnecessary costs. It is so bespoke in its approach to designing ships that it introduces unnecessary costs, which render British shipyards uncompetitive, even in the naval sphere, never mind the commercial sphere.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for securing this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) has just hit the nail on the head. Does he agree that the lack of a steady drumbeat of orders to ensure our industrial base has caused this problem, and that the wonderful words of the shipbuilding strategy are not being delivered by the Government?

[Mr Sweeney]

I absolutely agree. We see a cognitive dissonance between the vision of the outcome desired and the prescription to deliver that vision and commitment, which are not in alignment. They are not going to deliver it. That is the tragedy of it. We all want to see the national shipbuilding strategy succeed. We are trying to deliver our own collective understanding of what is best for the British industrial capability into this document, so that we achieve the outcome of a globally competitive and effective shipbuilding industry in the UK again.

My hon. Friend mentioned a feast and famine approach to British shipbuilding, which has long been an issue, particularly as the commercial capability has fallen away. I look in stark contrast at the American approach to shipbuilding. The Arleigh Burke destroyer programme plans to build 77 ships. Those ships have been consistently under construction with the same hull since 1988. They have been built since the year before I was born, and it still plans to build more. That is a consistency of approach that we ought to think about adopting in the UK. It would essentially be a continuation of the Type 23 frigate programme, but adapting its technology and capability and maintaining the learning curves achieved over a 30-year build programme. That would be a huge opportunity for British shipbuilding. Why do we insist on stopping every time we build six Type 45s and starting from scratch on a Type 26 when a Type 45 platform could have been adapted to deliver the same capability as a Type 26? The approach is wrong-headed.

The Type 45 project has 13 different types of watertight doors. Why do we have such a huge level of variance in the programmes? We have no standardisation, no grip on the design, no standard approach to delivery, and no innovation in adopting new products and defence standards. We have no resilience or innovation in defence when it comes to an entrepreneurial way of delivering ships. If we were to benchmark it against how Meyer Werft build a complex cruise ship, the lead time between specification to delivery of the ship is minuscule compared with what we do with the equivalent ship of, say, our Type 26 platform. It is years and it is unacceptable. We need to seriously grip that if we want to drive down costs, deliver value in the naval shipbuilding industry and achieve the outcomes in terms of numbers for the Royal Navy that we desire.

The prescription is chaotic. It talks about a vision for having more

“certainty about the Royal Navy’s procurement plans”,

yet it wants to introduce a competitive programme for a Type 31. That goes right back to the early 1990s with the Type 23 programme, when Swan Hunter was competing with Yarrow shipbuilders on the Clyde, and what happened? None of those shipyards could invest in modern facilities and modern practices that would deliver the benefits in terms of timescale and minor efficiencies that would allow the ships to be built for value for money. It ended with the collapse of Swan Hunter and a drip-feeding of orders. There were huge redundancies in the shipping industry and huge uncertainty. This is a recipe to return to that model that was deeply flawed in the 1990s and led ultimately to the loss of British shipbuilding capability. That is why we are appealing today for a commitment to uphold what was originally planned in the terms of business agreement, which was extinguished.

A letter of 19 October from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), said that the terms of agreement was extinguished. It committed to a single world-class site for complex warship building on the Clyde and investing in that shipyard facility to make it world class, upper quartile. That would deliver the benefits industrially to allow us to deliver a national shipbuilding programme for frigates and destroyers, which would ensure that they had a consistency of build that would deliver the long-term benefits, learning curves and efficiencies. It would drive down the cost of the ships and allow them to be built at volume, which, as the right hon. Member for New Forest East mentioned, is necessary to sustain a larger Royal Navy fleet. That is how we should do this. It is not about spreading it around, which will not work.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary programme has better potential because it has a lower gross compensated tonnage and is a less complex ship, although it is still complex. If the tonnage of 40,000 tonnes each was spread around the remaining UK shipyards, that would provide the bedrock of capacity to sustain all the shipyards around the UK, while having the designated complex war shipyard on the Clyde. That is what happens with the Canadian and Australian shipyards and it is what happens in the United States. That is the approach we ought to have. Why has the national shipbuilding strategy not taken account of international benchmarks? Why has it not got a commercial shipbuilding focus as well to develop a longer term model based on European norms? Why are we not committed to building British ships, including the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, in the UK? I could go on for much longer because I am closely associated with the topic.

In summary, I have outlined what we want to see changed in order to make the national shipbuilding strategy worthy of the name it deserves. We need world-class UK shipbuilding back, and the way to do it is to adopt those suggested improvements.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. I thank the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for securing this debate. During the defence debate less than two weeks ago in the Chamber, every single Member of the all-party group on shipbuilding and ship repair complained that we had applied for debates since the publication of the national shipbuilding strategy. All of a sudden, at the very next ballot, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport secured one, so I thank him for that. I hope he will accept my apology to him in relation to Darth Vader. I actually misspoke. I did not mean to say “his hero”. What I meant to say was “their hero”, because Darth Vader is a Conservative icon and not of any other political party. I can see nods coming from the Conservative Benches.

The history of how we have got to this point is important, particularly for those of us who represent the best shipbuilders in the world: the shipyard workers on the Clyde, and those in the Govan shipyard in particular. In 2014 they were promised that 13 Type 26 frigates would be built there, plus a frigate factory. Ever since, there has been a real concern that there has been a row-back by the Ministry of Defence. The frigate factory was cancelled. Then, in November 2015, during the national strategic defence review, there were no longer 13 Type 26 frigates, but eight. We were told not to worry and remain happy because instead of five Type 26 frigates, there will be five Type 31 frigates, which the Clyde will build and will be exportable. I will come back to that later.

Sir John Parker’s report was an honest attempt to deal with the feast and famine that we have heard about from the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), but it contained several historical inaccuracies that concern me because the national shipbuilding strategy seems to be based on those historical inaccuracies, which is that two different types of ships have never been built in the same shipyard. That is not the case. Anybody who had worked at Yarrow’s would tell us that that was not the case, because, while they were building ships for the Royal Navy, they were building a different type of ship for the Malaysian navy. If the Government are basing their decision on such an historical inaccuracy, it is up to us Members of Parliament to tell them that it is an historical inaccuracy, and perhaps they might want to comment on that and put that right.

[Mr Sweeney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, particularly about the frigate factory. Does he agree that the major issue was the fact that financing could not be achieved, because of fragmentation of the programme? If that had been gripped in the same way as programmes such as HS2 or the London Olympics, and the budget had been assured through its whole life, there would have been a business case to finance, through commercial means, the investment necessary to build a world-class shipyard on the Clyde.

[Chris Stephens]

I agree entirely. My Glasgow comrade is absolutely correct. That was one of the significant reasons for the frigate factory being cancelled.

My concern about the national shipbuilding strategy has been expressed by others: it is that we are going back to 1980s thinking and introducing competition. One of two things can happen when we start to introduce competition on that basis. Shipyards will try to undercut. As we heard earlier from my Glasgow comrade, that meant the collapse of Swan Hunter. It would be inevitable if we went back to the days of competition. Alternatively, companies would get together and the prices of ships would increase.

I think I am being fair and moderate in my remarks when I say that we are now at a place where the announcement of the national shipbuilding strategy was a presentational dog’s breakfast. The then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), claimed six times in the Chamber that there was a frigate factory on the Clyde. While he was on his feet in the Chamber making that claim, GMB officials were taking Scottish journalists around the proposed site, which was rubble and ash. There is no frigate factory on the Clyde. It was a presentational disaster for the Government.

I add my support to that expressed already for the argument that there is no need for the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service ships to go to international competition. The reason no British yard has yet asked to be considered is that they believe the work will be sent out internationally; that is inevitable. As has been said, there would be clear economic benefits from building those ships not just for the local economies of the places where they could be built, in a modular format, but from the tax and national insurance take.

I also want to add to concerns expressed about the Type 31 frigate. It seems to me that the price is setting the capability of that ship, vessel or whatever we call it. The suggestion that it could be built for £250 million has already been described as a conspiracy of optimism. We need to know its capability and its role and purpose within the Royal Navy. To put it more simply: is it a complex naval warship? If it is, it should be built on the Clyde, which has been designated by the Government as a specialist shipyard to build complex naval warships.

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman says that the Clyde has that designation, but in reality, under the terms of business agreement, it was extinguished in 2014, although that has not been explained. Why did the rationale change? It makes sense to build all the complex warships on one integrated site where all the learning curves, benefits and efficiencies are concentrated. Why has that changed?

[Chris Stephens]

I think that is a question for the Minister. We need to know the reason, and I shall explain why. I understand that the only country with more than one specialist shipyard is the United States of America. That is probably no surprise given the size of the US Navy. We need to know such things, because recently there was an accident at sea involving a US Navy ship. If it had been built to commercial standards rather than by a specialist yard the collision with another ship would have been a real disaster. The model elsewhere, especially in Europe, is that one specialist shipyard builds complex naval warships.

There is a contract for three Type 26 frigates on the Clyde and I ask the Minister to confirm that the other five will be built there. There is a feeling in the yards and the trade unions that represent the workers that there has been a roll-back on delivering on promises.

I echo the points that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East made about shipyard construction. If the Ministry of Defence is concerned about economies and efficiencies and similar issues, it has a role to play in investing in shipyards and speaking to companies. The Clyde should have a frigate factory, and there is a role for the MOD to play in that.

The national shipbuilding strategy needs a bit more work. This is the first opportunity that hon. Members have had since the statement to raise concerns, and I hope that the Minister has listened carefully and will be able to respond to many of the points we have made.

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. I thank the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for his significant move in bringing the debate to the Chamber today.

Shipbuilding, as hon. Members know, is a key part of our industrial base. Although the industry has undergone much change in recent years, including to the number of people involved in it, it is still a key element of our industrial heritage. The national shipbuilding strategy that was introduced last September gave some rays of hope to the industry more generally. Sir John Parker recognised that a steady drumbeat of orders was crucial if investment in technology and skills was to make new-build projects more competitive, and that the sharing of risks between yards would give flexibility and speed to help in meeting our aspirations to renew our, albeit diminished, naval fleet. On that last point, there has been a debate about the sense of sharing work between yards, and perhaps that is a debate for another day. The proof of the pudding, for the national shipbuilding strategy, will be in the eating. Already the signs are not good.

There is no clear sign that a drumbeat of orders will be forthcoming at a sufficient pace to give some surety to the industry. As workers on the Clyde are all too aware, we have already witnessed the number of Type 26 frigates being reduced from 13 to eight, and then the placing of an order for just three. My good friend the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), cited the example of the Type 45s, which started at 12, were reduced to eight and ended up as six. The direction of travel in MOD thinking is a matter of some concern. The only drumbeat that is evident to me is the one to which Type 23s will come out of service, starting in 2023 with HMS Argyll and ending 13 years later, in 2035, with HMS St Albans. That is a steady drumbeat for the withdrawal of ships from service; we need one for a process going in the opposite direction. Indeed, the previous First Sea Lord said that that time scale for the Type 23s was not extendable. If we are to maintain 19 surface frigates and destroyers at sea or in a state of readiness, something needs to give from the Minister’s office.

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned sustaining the drumbeat. Does he agree that there is an unnecessary constraint on that because of the arbitrary in-year spend profile that the MOD is lumbered with? The key to unlocking that is the Treasury, which can adapt its method of financing huge generational programmes for things such as complex warships. Those are unique in relation to the way the Government buy kit. The undertaking is huge and unique and should be financed in a way appropriate to the project.

[Douglas Chapman]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is very experienced in such matters and I am sure that he has considered it long and hard for a number of years, both as an industry professional and as an MP. It is obvious, given the amount of investment being put in, that it must be done in the long term, and looking at the project overall rather than as its component parts. I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The Government’s watchword has been that we must live within our means. The Tory manifesto in 2017 spoke of meeting the NATO target of at least 2% of GDP going on defence spending, and increasing defence spending by at least 0.5% over inflation each year. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, it has been cut in real terms since 2010-11 by some 13%. That has resulted in a massive black hole of around £20 billion. Big-ticket items such as F-35s are purchased in US dollars, and only one carrier can be used at a time. Last night, Max Hastings said on “Newsnight” that the Dreadnought has an outdated capability.

All that has contributed to the black hole with which the Ministry of Defence currently has to cope. Such things have pride of place in the Government’s strategy, but in the current financial climate it is a case of pride coming before a fall because the budget for them—and for many other things, such as the P-8s, which are also purchased in US dollars—is simply unsustainable. Decisions that would offer hope and a future to the likes of the Clyde, Rosyth, Appledore and Tyneside are delayed, and we miss the chance to synchronise the drumbeat that would secure jobs, skills and investment.

If we are to “live within our means” as the Government mantra suggests, the MOD either needs to find more money, or something else has to give. The SNP would choose to get rid of nuclear weapons. Think of the opportunity-cost benefit if Trident, or Dreadnought—call it what you will—was not a consideration in our defence budget. How much would that release for more conventional forces? How many more surface ships could we start to build to create a real drumbeat of orders? How much more money for cyber, land forces and the Royal Air Force? Is it not madness that we have a NATO ally with nuclear weapons just 20 miles off our coastline? In trying to satisfy the most pro-nuclear lobby in the House, could not that capability be shared between those two adjacent NATO nations, instead of their both paying top dollar for it? If we can share a tapestry, as I believe we are about to do, who knows what other things we could share on a larger scale? If we are to meet the key dates for bringing the Type 26s and Type 31s into service, something has to give. The Government cannot keep delaying orders, lengthening the pace of decision making, and not making savings in the budget to allow contracts to be signed, sealed and delivered.

SNP Members long for the day when Scotland becomes an independent country that is responsible for its own defences. Small nation Norway has a shipbuilding industry order book as long as your arm, and it has also bought into F-35 and P-8 capability. That can be done even with a small nation budget. Last week, small nation Denmark agreed to increase its defence budget by some 20% to meet the threats that the Danish people might face now and in the future. Small, well-equipped, effective, flexible, good partner nations can play their part in the defence of Europe both individually and through NATO.

Finally, while Scotland is still a constituent part of the UK, I urge the Minister to make surface shipbuilding his priority. In my constituency, workers at Rosyth have delivered carriers and a wide range of refit projects on time and to budget. We now have an opportunity to deliver the Type 26s, Type 31s and the fleet solid support ships. The message is simple: let us make the national shipbuilding strategy a working document that encourages the engineering talent of our nation to get on with the job, at pace, and with that vital steady drumbeat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb]

The value of the strategy is in ensuring that we have a British-owned design. The whole strategy is building on the manner in which the aircraft carriers were built successfully—the block-building capacity. That is the strategy we have undertaken, and it will pay dividends.

The third element is exports.

[Mr Sweeney]

Will the Minister give way?

[Guto Bebb]

I cannot, I am afraid; I only have three minutes left. We identified that the export market is crucial. Having the export market allows us to look at cost controls and the ability to create savings within the programme. It also allows the United Kingdom to show once again that we have the ability to design and deliver ships internationally. For the MOD, the whole effort in identifying the support for the shipbuilding strategy is about building capacity and ensuring we are in a position to target other markets. I hope that Members will join the Ministry of Defence and the Government in ensuring that the advantages of the Type 26 are made known to potential customers in all parts of the world.

The other issue I want to touch on is a key success for the strategy, which is the partnership approach. To return to Sir John Parker’s original point, the strategy hinges on the strength of the partnership between the Government and the sector. It is about our collective ability not simply to improve productivity and develop the product that the international market wants to buy, but to continue to develop the skills and the talent to keep the industry firing on all cylinders. That is exactly what Members have been asking for, it is absolutely what I want to contribute in my role in the Ministry of Defence, and it is the purpose of the shipbuilding strategy. Where we need to refine or take on board the advice and guidance given to us by colleagues, we will do that, because the aim of the strategy is to ensure that we leave the shipbuilding sector in a better place than we found it. I am confident we can do that, but we need support from all parts of the House.

I hope we are building on firm foundations. We are looking to move to the future with a strategy that is not starting from scratch, but builds on our strengths and reputation, while identifying that we have to rectify the fact that we have not sold a warship in 40 years. We have to be confident that what we have to offer is cutting edge. It is about working with the industry, which has a reputation to live up to and has contributed so much in so many parts of the United Kingdom. We need to ensure that the industry is capable of producing ships of value to the UK and the Navy while competing internationally and making a cutting-edge contribution at the world level.

Members have touched on the economic contribution that the strategy can make. I am very aware of that. Ipsos MORI has conducted research that highlights what we need to do. It is available on the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy website. I am aware that I need to allow the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport time to sum up the debate, so I will finish. I genuinely believe that we are moving forward constructively. As a Minister, I want to work with Members to ensure that the strategy delivers for the United Kingdom and our Navy.