Rebecca Smith

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. That is exactly what I am beginning to hear in my constituency. I referred earlier to a queue of companies wanting to come to South West Devon. My concern is that the queue is going to get shorter if the investment under the DIP does not come forward. Following the strategic defence review came the defence industrial strategy. Again, it was another lauded document, with further references to industrial clusters, which it called “critical for the competitiveness of the IS-8 and national economic resilience”, including to “maritime autonomy in Plymouth” and so on; it kept promising. There was a fantastic paragraph in the strategy about the existing ecosystem in Plymouth, to which I have already alluded. It was an exciting prospect and has been a positive development. The city has got going; we have Team Plymouth looking at how we can deliver. But the defence investment plan is required to fulfil this aimed-for growth and to enable contracts—like those just mentioned by my hon Friend—to be brought forward, with the jobs that have always been promised. For businesses, the SDR and the defence investment plan were exciting, but they are still missing the funding. This is a threat to our national sovereign capability and to the economic growth that the Government seem convinced that they are going to deliver. Furthermore, there is a delay to the vital trial areas for autonomy that we were also promised, and that is hampering growth too. Businesses in my constituency want the green light in order to go forward on their testing, but those trial areas have not come forward—we just see more dither and delay. I raised this matter recently in Prime Minister’s questions, asking for the changes that we need to see. Canada is able to clear these vessels for practice testing off their shores within as little as six weeks, yet our businesses are expected to fill out hundreds and hundreds of pages of applications.