Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of reliance of the British armed forces on overseas manufacturing.

The Ministry of Defence is always open to working with international companies, as long as our procurement guidelines are followed and our national security is kept safe. The Department continually assesses overseas dependencies within Defence supply chains and is improving its visibility of these dependencies through supply-chain mapping, programme-level assessments and its Supply Chain Resilience Intelligence Performance Tool (SCRIPT) analytical capability. 85% of MOD’s direct expenditure with industry on manufacturing is for work taking place in the UK.