Sarah Newton
Main Page: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)Department Debates - View all Sarah Newton's debates with the Ministry of Defence
National Shipbuilding Strategy
Sarah Newton Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is making a really good speech, and I congratulate him on securing this debate. I am sorry that duty calls for me to return to Cornwall and that I can only make this intervention and not a speech. I thoroughly agree with him. I am very proud that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary is based in Falmouth. As he says, we have a valuable through-life contract. I wholeheartedly agree that the ships should be built in the UK, and we are proud to have the opportunity to service them. It is vital to have such high-skilled, well-paid jobs in a peripheral area such as Cornwall, which has low wages. Those jobs are vital to our local economy. When decisions are made about procurement, they should be about not just the price tag on the vessel, but the contribution that those industries make to the regional economy.
