Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to increase apprenticeships in the defence sector in Scotland.

Defence is making a landmark investment in Scotland’s future defence workforce, including apprenticeships, through the Defence Industrial Strategy’s £182 million skills package and the Scotland Defence Growth Deal.

The Scotland Defence Growth Deal has identified skills as a core priority and will support interventions to address skills shortages across the defence sector. This includes a proposed £10 million investment in up to two Defence Technical Excellence Colleges in Scotland, creating pathways into careers in defence engineering, advanced manufacturing and maritime technologies.

Scotland will also benefit from UK-wide initiatives such as the UCAS Defence Portal, which will promote awareness of high-quality careers in defence and the apprenticeship and graduate routes into them. Similarly, through the Defence Universities Alliance, we are working with the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde to grow collaboration between MOD, universities and defence industries to support skills and the pipeline of students into rewarding careers.

In addition, major defence programmes are creating apprenticeship opportunities in Scotland. The Type 31 frigate programme in Rosyth, for example, currently supports around 150 apprenticeships and is expected to generate further apprenticeship opportunities over the lifetime of the programme.