Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of the skilled workforce in the UK for the design of grey ships.

The UK Shipbuilding Skills Taskforce, which was set up as part of the National Shipbuilding Strategy Refresh, meets regularly and is actively working with industry to collect skills data and assess how the sector will meet the level of ambition set by the Refresh, including for ship design skills.