Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department has taken to strengthen security and defence cooperation with Australia.

As a partner of 50 years in the Five Power Defence Arrangements and fellow Five Eyes country, Australia is an indispensable friend in the Indo-Pacific.

The Defence Secretary recently returned from a UK-Australia ministerial dialogue where he agreed concrete steps to deepen strategic defence cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, enabled by additional deployments and facilitated by an enhanced British Defence Staff in Canberra. Alongside these, AUKUS is a further demonstration of our commitment to Australia, and to Indo-Pacific security more widely.