Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to speed up (1) delivery of F35B fighters, and (2) the formation of the second squadron.

Due to other operational commitments and engineering training pipelines there are no plans to accelerate our personnel Force Growth plan at present. We are constrained by our internationally agreed manufacture and delivery profile; there are capacity limitations in the overall F-35 development programme with many global customers.