James Cartlidge

I congratulate the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) on tabling this urgent question. It was a real pleasure to visit the Leonardo factory last September and witness how critical it is to employment in his constituency. Visiting the factory, one gets a powerful sense of Britain’s rotary history, but we want it to have a brilliant future too. That is why it is so worrying that the CEO of Leonardo recently warned that at least 3,300 jobs could be at risk if the NMH procurement does not go ahead. It was with those jobs in mind that when I announced the formal tender of the new medium helicopter as Defence Procurement Minister in February 2024, I took the decision to give a much stronger weighting to two key areas of the tender: first, the commitment of bidders to delivering high-skilled rotary work in the UK; and secondly, exportability, so that the supply chain could endure. All that will count for nothing if the procurement is cancelled. Can the Minister confirm whether there is still a military requirement for NMH? If so, is he still committed to procuring NMH? After all, when I asked the question last April, I was told I would get the answer in the strategic defence review, but the SDR document never mentioned NMH at all. Instead, when the Secretary of State announced the SDR to Parliament last June, he said that the detailed decisions would be covered in the defence investment plan, which he said then would be published in the autumn of 2025. Given that it is now 2026, and that promise has clearly been broken, can the Minister tell us in which month he will finally publish the DIP? Can he confirm reports from multiple sources that the reason the DIP is delayed is that there is now a £28 billion black hole in the MOD budget? Finally, the Budget Red Book shows exactly what Labour will spend on removing the two-child benefit cap right up to 2031, but does not say what the defence budget will be that year. Can the Minister tell us? Is the reality not that by prioritising welfare over going to 3% on defence this Parliament, Labour are paralysing decision making in the Ministry of Defence and putting thousands of jobs at risk in our defence industry at Yeovil and across the UK?