Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Wallace and Alex Cunningham(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)
The initial phase of awarding the contract for fleet solid support ships is due very soon. As that is market-sensitive, I will limit my response to saying that what I expect from whoever is successful is investment in our yards, in British jobs and in British supply chains.
Alex Cunningham
As a reporter for Radio Clyde in 1979, I remember standing underneath the two ships built for the Polish navy as they were launched into the river—I needed to catch the sound effects. In those days, the UK and other Governments had tremendous pride in our shipbuilding industry, but the Thatcher Government devastated it. Why do today’s Tory Government not restore that pride? Why do they not commit, as the Secretary of State suggested, to building those ships in British yards, as the Labour party would do, to provide those 6,000 jobs that could benefit communities across the country?
Mr Wallace
I will certainly ignore the rewriting of history other than to say that we still take pride in the ships that we build in this country. Some of our ships are the very best in the world. We will continue that, unlike the Scottish Government, who seem to think that they cannot make their own ships in Scottish yards and make them in foreign yards.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Wallace and Alex Cunningham(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
The Government’s strategy towards China is that we treat it in a way that befits its actions but measure our response when China does things that we do not like. For example, we test freedom of navigation in the Pacific but also seek to listen to the experts when it comes to issues such as Huawei. That is why the Government made the choice last week to allow Huawei to have a limited amount of the 5G market. Our policy towards Huawei is to cap it, to ban it in other parts of the network, and to reduce over time our dependency on that company and others like it.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)