---

Defence Jobs

I will not give way again, as time is short and I want to allow the Minister to deal with the many issues that have been raised. I shall say a brief word about the defence industrial strategy. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin drew attention to the defence industrial strategy’s references to sovereignty and what is meant by the term British. As far as I am concerned, we mean the ownership of intellectual property, companies being based in this country and, very importantly, contracts and companies that will ensure the security of supply of defence capability for this country. Taking those three things together, we can focus on what the defence industrial strategy means by sovereignty and a preference for British companies. I repeat that the absolute priority of the MOD must be to ensure that we maintain the standards of service and support that our forces deserve and need. However, it is worth making one more point about the defence training review as a caution: whatever decision the Minister takes, it should not undermine the military ethos of that training. We are training soldiers and servicemen, and that is not the same as training people for a role in private business. We ask a great deal of those who serve in our armed forces. Our training should recognise that, and the military ethos should be properly preserved to recognise that we ask our armed forces to do a very separate and distinctive job. We must ensure that we maintain the military ethos and professionalism of the armed forces on which we depend, as we have in the past and will in the future.