Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps the Army is taking to support allies and partners, including in the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, South America and Africa.

The Strategic Defence Review and Defence Diplomacy Strategy set out the importance of maintaining and deepening our alliances and partnerships. The Ministry of Defence is taking a more deliberate, targeted and coherent approach to its international relationships with a range of allies and partners, enabling us to build world-beating capabilities, rally international support to our priorities, pursue export opportunities and strengthen our hand in competition with adversaries.

In the Middle East, our relationships are enabled through our persistent military footprint in the region, temporary deployments, security assurances, and increased joint capability development. We also advocate for increased burden sharing and intelligence exchanges with regional partners.

In the Indo-Pacific, we are focusing on capability and technology collaboration, military training and exercises, and intelligence sharing with key partners, including making the most of our membership of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, while seeking to maintain a persistent military presence.

In Africa, our support to partners promotes peace and stability and addresses upstream threats to UK and our allies’ interests. This includes deployments in Kenya and Somalia, support to UN missions and episodic tri-service deployments across the continent to conduct joint training and capability development activity.

In South America, we maintain our relationships with regional partners and allies through military co-operation and a persistent military forward presence. We have permanent deployments in the South Atlantic through British Forces South Atlantic Islands where we have two overseas bases (in the Falkland Islands and Ascension).