Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent steps his Department has taken to support naval shipbuilding in (a) the North East and (b) the UK.

The National Shipbuilding Strategy aims to re-energise the UK's shipbuilding industry by encouraging participation from across the UK shipbuilding enterprise, including opening up the procurement of all future naval ships to competition.

A key objective of the National Shipbuilding Strategy is to improve the international competitiveness of the UK shipbuilding industry. To that end, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) is working with industry through the Maritime Enterprise Working Group (MEWG) to undertake a long-term programme of improvement. The MEWG's membership consists of high ranking industry members from different parts of the country, including representatives of companies based in the North East. The group's priorities include improving competitiveness and productivity in the shipyards and supply chain to help shipbuilding companies improve their capability when bidding for, both, commercial and naval contracts. This is on top of approximately £3 billion of MOD expenditure with the UK's shipbuilding and repair industry in FY2016-17, as set out in the MOD's most recent regional spending bulletin:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/mod-regional-expenditure-with-uk-industry-and-supported-employment-201617