Defence Procurement and Supply Chains

Debate between Charles Walker and Simon Fell

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Charles. I will try to be quicker than that. I thank the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) for securing this important and timely debate. We keep hearing the phrase “levelling up” and the hon. Gentleman mentioned it. The Prime Minister tells us that it is his mission to level up the country, and for communities such as mine in the north that is a welcome prospect. We need to recognise just how important the defence supply chain is to that agenda.

In my constituency, we build the nuclear deterrent, and when I say we, I mean 10,000 of the most skilled, world-leading workers imaginable building submarines with a complexity rivalled perhaps only by what NASA does. That work—the completion of the Astute-class boats and the delivery of the four Dreadnought-class boats—is the beating heart of Barrow and Furness and our local economy.

Not to labour that metaphor, but if the work in the yard is the heart, then the supply chain is the blood that runs through our communities, keeping our businesses alive through Cumbria and beyond. The supply-chain spend alone was £1 billion in 2019 from the submarine programme. That supports 80-plus businesses in Cumbria, but it does far more than that. It trains apprentices and creates skills clusters that attract even more businesses and further investment. Used well—don’t get me wrong, I would far rather see more supply-chain spend in Cumbria—defence procurement can be transformative.

BAE in Barrow has recognised what it needs to do to invest in our communities to do its job well. To produce boats to a steady and reliable drumbeat, it needs to invest in our towns to make sure we can stand on our own two feet and that we are creating the people with the skills to keep fuel in that machine. I applaud it for acting in that way. It backed our local schools and college, it led Barrow’s successful town deal—I especially give credit to Steve Cole from BAE on that—and it is championing a learning quarter in our town, which will bring a university campus into Barrow and address the fundamental problem that towns such as mine have, where there is a brain drain of young people leaving to the bright lights of big cities like Manchester and Liverpool.

In Furness, defence spending is not just about submarines; it is about backing education and skills, backing local businesses and providing resilience for our local economy in these troubled times. I welcome the upcoming defence and security industrial strategy, which I hope will lead to much more of this in communities like mine; frankly, it is very badly needed.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I call Christina Rees. You have four minutes.