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Defence Training Review

It is clear that defence training at RAF Cosford will end by 2011. Despite the Secretary of State’s comments, we have heard no details, definitive statement or guarantee about the type of defence sector work that Cosford might expect. In his statement, he said that his Department was ““exploring a number of proposals for the potential future defence use””, but even those future proposals must go through an approval process. There is thus no guarantee that Metrix, which might have a different view from the Ministry of Defence, will come forward with a learning resource centre, a national training research and development support centre, or, indeed, the national manufacturing skills academy. Will the Secretary of State assure the workers who are watching us live that proposals will be worked up in detail? Will he give those workers details and a guarantee that they will have a bright future, rather than giving us a bland statement that Cosford will have some sort of defence future?