Question to the Ministry of Defence:

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of the creation of the National Shipbuilding Office on (a) the number of ships being built in the UK and (b) the amount of (i) British technology, (ii) components and (iii) steel in those ships.

The National Shipbuilding Office will be responsible for driving forward one of the Prime Minister’s key domestic priorities across Government. It will report directly to the Shipbuilding Tsar and will oversee all of the UK Government’s interests in UK shipbuilding.

Our National Shipbuilding Strategy Refresh, which will be published later this year, will set out our approach in more detail.