Oral Answers to Questions

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend and I have met to discuss this on a number of occasions, and my Department, along with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, is doing everything it can to help. We are working with GE to see if there are different ways to pull work forward. It is an important capability, and I would very much like to see the technology, which was developed in the UK, continue to be manufactured in the UK. We have been very successful in selling the Type 26 around the world, including to Australia and Canada, and it would be great for Rugby to get that benefit.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

T7. Mr Speaker, I join you and other colleagues in paying tribute to Paul Flynn for his generous advice, which he gave all the time, especially to me when I was first elected in 2007.Given the Cameron Government’s decision to scrap our maritime patrol capability and this Government’s decision, several years later, to buy maritime patrol aircraft off the shelf, why do we not yet have a capability in place? What is the Ministry of Defence doing to patrol our territorial waters in the meantime, particularly in the North sea?

[Mark Lancaster]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I am delighted that we are committed to buying nine new P-8 aircraft, which will be arriving from next year. Because of the work we have done with the US before they arrive, they will have an almost immediate initial operating capability.