§ Lord Hoyleasked Her Majesty's Government:
What progress has been made on the Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle programme. [HL4591]
§ The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean)We are pleased to announce that the UK and Germany today signed a contract with ARTEC GmbH, a consortium including Alvis Vehicles Ltd from the UK, for the development of a family of armoured utility vehicles, known in the UK as the Multi-Role Armoured Vehicle (MRAV). The MRAV programme will provide the British Army with a modern and flexible family of armoured utility vehicles that can operate in both high intensity conflict and in rapid reaction peace support and humanitarian operations world-wide.
The contract represents a major step forward in European co-operation in armoured vehicles, and will be procured through the quadrilateral Organisation for Joint Armaments Cooperation known as OCCAR. This contract will help secure up to 500 manufacturing jobs within the UK supplier base, the majority of which will be in the Telford area over the life of the programme.