Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to the Declaration of Intent between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, The French Republic and Ukraine relating to the deployment of multinational forces in support of the defence, reconstruction and strategic sustainability of Ukraine, if he will outline how he will help strengthen the defence-industrial potential of Ukraine.

The UK contributes significantly to Ukraine's defence industrial resilience through Task Force HIRST and Programme LYRA. A key strength of the UK's approach lies in our ability to consistently support Ukraine by bringing together our industrial base and technologists to partner with Ukrainian companies, establishing new joint ventures.

The deployment of a Multinational Force to Ukraine will further reinforce our support and provide the right environment to exploit and rapidly scale the significant work the UK has already done.

We will continue to use UK and international funding and the interest on immobilised Russian assets to support Ukrainian and UK industrial collaboration and continue to work with our Ukrainian partners to reduce frictions and increase materiel production.

This will build on the UK's successes under HIRST: trade missions, megaprojects, equipment support; and leverage the evolution of our support under the 100 Year Partnership, through the sharing of battlefield technology and joint capability development under Programme LYRA.