Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what progress has been made on development of the Storm Shadow stand-off weapon; what assessment he has made of its potential advantages to the UK's defence capabilities; and if he will make a statement.

Storm Shadow continues to provide the UK with a unique capability for precision strike against high value hardened targets without exposing aircraft and crews to higher than necessary levels of risk.

The Storm Shadow Mid Life Refurbishment concept phase is considering options to maintain the Storm Shadow Weapons System Capability in order to meet our planning requirements. We have agreed to exchange information with France on our respective national refurbishment and upgrade programmes for Storm Shadow/SCALP EG (the French name for Storm Shadow), underpinned by a Memorandum of Understanding that was signed at the Farnborough International Air Show in July 2014.

I announced in July that the Storm Shadow is to be integrated onto the RAF's Typhoon aircraft to enter service in 2018.