Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, with reference to his Department's press release entitled Australia-UK Defence Industry Dialogue: Joint Statement, published in 23 February 2026, what steps he has taken to explore options that maximise opportunities to strengthen the UK collective steel industrial base with that of Australia.

I was pleased to host Minister Pat Conroy for the first Australia-UK Defence Industry Dialogue since 2018. As one of our closest allies, we had constructive discussions on how we can work together towards a safer and prosperous future.

A cornerstone of doing so is the AUKUS partnership, which will drive growth, create thousands of jobs and provide new opportunities across the trilateral submarine supply chain, building essential resilience into this vital area of our Defence industry.

With this in mind, we continue to work with Australia to understand how each country’s steel industry can provide optimal support for our respective SSN-AUKUS build programmes. Opportunities for the UK steel industry have already been realised, with Sheffield Forgemasters producing components for Australia’s SSN-AUKUS submarines. This has been underpinned by the £6 billion investment into the UK’s submarine building infrastructure that the Government announced in the Strategic Defence Review and a further £2.4 billion that Australia is providing to support capacity growth at Rolls-Royce Submarines and Sheffield Forgemasters.