Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP joined colleagues from the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme to visit the Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers at Rosyth Dockyard on 11th February. The Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers will be the biggest and most powerful surface warships ever constructed for the Royal Navy and will represent a huge increase in capability, enabling the delivery of increased strategic effect and influence around the world. The carriers will begin sea trials next year, and should be fully-operational in 2018, having first been commissioned in 1998’s Strategic Defence Review.
Anne-Marie said: “It was great to see first-hand such an impressive project, managed by an exceptional team of industrial partners and the Royal Navy working together to maximise the logistics of such a complex ship. The QE class carriers will provide a step change to our military capability, and the work our armed forces continue to do in protecting Britain's interests around the globe, supporting humanitarian crises & defending our nation and allies through NATO efforts.”
The visit was organised as part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, an initiative in which MPs and Peers of all parties spend a year building up their knowledge of the armed forces through briefings and visits in order to better equip them to take part in debates on the UK’s future military engagements and the way in which our armed forces operate.
Anne-Marie is assigned to the RAF wing of the scheme, and her year so far has included a visit to RAF Boulmer in her constituency. Speaking about the scheme, Mrs Trevelyan said: “It was always very important to me that I gain as in-depth an understanding as possible of what life is like for our armed forces and their families, so I can better understand the challenges they face and what we as a nation ask them to do. It was particularly important as I have RAF Boulmer in my constituency, and it was great to visit them, and to welcome some of them down to Westminster at the end of last year.”
Photograph taken at Rosyth Dockyard: Left – right: Byron Davies MP (Conservative, Gower) Ranil Jayawardena MP (Conservative, North East Hampshire), Ruth Smeeth MP (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent North & Kidsgrove) and Anne-Marie Trevelyan MP (Conservative, Berwick-upon-Tweed).
You can learn more about the carriers by clicking HERE.
