Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that companies in the UK aerospace supply chain benefit from increasing aircraft orders.

The Government is investing £80m in the Sharing in Growth supply chain performance improvement programme; the lead 43 companies have already won in excess of £1.4 billion of contracts as a result of this work. The Government is also supporting the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme to help SMEs innovate, develop and market technology. In addition, the Government has supported industry development of the Supply Chain Competitiveness Charter, where larger aerospace companies commit to share growth opportunities with suppliers in return for continued improvement in operational performance.