Alec Shelbrooke
Main Page: Alec Shelbrooke (Conservative - Wetherby and Easingwold)Department Debates - View all Alec Shelbrooke's debates with the Ministry of Defence
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Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts(1 day, 7 hours ago)
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Luke Pollard
We have been very clear in the defence industrial strategy and the strategic defence review that we want more of a rising defence budget to go to British companies. That is changing the way in which defence procures, and it is the right change that we need to see as we bring more strategic autonomy back to the UK and as we friendshore and onshore more capabilities in these more difficult times. I am afraid that I will not be able to give the hon. Gentleman the full details, because they will be set out in the defence investment plan, as he has heard from my previous answers.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
Disregarding the Minister’s comment that we have to wait for the investment plan, most people in this Chamber know that that is because the Treasury is letting him do it. Further to the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), I am concerned about supply chain security. We have seen China, for example, put America over a barrel by dropping off renewables and making it reverse. Having supply chains in the United Kingdom is vital. Will the Minister really emphasise to the Treasury that it is a key strategic defence requirement that we are able to supply our military needs from within these borders? Maybe that will get the Treasury to sign off on what he clearly wants to tell us but cannot.
Luke Pollard
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to talk about small businesses and the wider supply chain. A large component part of the defence industrial strategy talks about those things as well; I am sure he has read that strategy, so he will be familiar with it. We want to see our suppliers in the UK expand. We also want to see more of them selling to the UK military; indeed, lots of our small companies sell to foreign militaries, but not yet to the UK military. We are launching the office for small business growth later this month. That will enable an easier route for UK SMEs to sell their products and services into the UK military—something that, time and again, they have said has been hard in the past. We are making it easier for the future.