Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in explaining to employers in his constituency that this payment of just shy of £2,300 is available to employers under the wage incentive in the Youth Contract where they take on young people. I hope he will also be aware that the Youth Contract consists not just of those 160,000 wage incentives, but of a funded increase in the number of work experience places—a quarter of a million of them—and a significant increase in funding for apprenticeships aimed at young people.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

How much have the Deputy Prime Minister and his Cabinet Office colleagues cost the public purse in conducting a study of alternatives to Trident that has taken more than two and a half years to show that there are indeed no alternatives to Trident as the basis of our nuclear deterrent?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend must be a soothsayer if he can tell what is in a report that has not been published yet. As he knows, the confidential version of the report has been provided to the Prime Minister and me, and we hope to publish the unclassified version shortly, when he will see that options are available to us. I have always argued against the idea that a total, like-for-like, exact replacement of Trident on precisely the same basis is the only option available to us as a country.