Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to ensure that the defence industry maintains the people with nuclear skills required for his Department's nuclear-based programmes.

The Ministry of Defence remains fully committed to its relationship with the wider defence industry and other Government Departments to ensure its people have the required nuclear skills. This includes membership and chairmanship of a number of skills forums alongside companies such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Babcock and the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Recent examples of this work include the Nuclear Skills Strategy which was published in December 2016, and the Building our Industrial Strategy green paper, published in January 2017.