Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I regard the Prime Minister’s meeting with President Xi as an important step forward. He is the first Prime Minister of the UK to meet the leader of China in nearly six years. After 14 years of damaging Conservative inconsistency on China, this Government will bring a long-term approach to managing our relations with China. We will co-operate where we can, compete where we should, and challenge where we must.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to support the cadet forces.

[The Minister for Veterans and People (Al Carns)]

I have visited various cadet units, and I am constantly in awe of their work not only to increase social mobility, but to improve the health and wellbeing of various young people across the country. They produce an annual return on investment in the region of £95 million. We are committed to sustaining cadet forces across the UK, and we continue to invest in cadet expansion in schools so that even more young people, particularly in the state sector, can benefit from being in the cadets.

[Damian Hinds]

I agree wholeheartedly with the Minister about the benefits of the cadets, so why have the Government cut support to cadets, even as they were launching a national youth strategy? His colleague said earlier that the Government would have a review. The question is: can that gap in support be plugged and the school staff instructor grant be restored so that more children—hopefully, many more children—in state schools can benefit from joining the cadets?

[Al Carns]

I am conducting a review into cadets and reserves. The cadet expansion programme will still receive £3.6 million in Government funding through the Ministry of Defence, and I can reassure the right hon. Member that we are fully committed to supporting the cadet expansion programme. I will speak to him about our review in due course, once it is complete.

Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He has beaten me to it, because I was going to say suitably warm words about my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow when he addresses the House later in this session. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that that report in 2018 was incredibly influential and very helpful in setting out not only the prosperity agenda that was announced in March 2019, but this paper. Two changes should warm the heart of the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] I will do my best. The first is that as we look at new procurements right from the outset we will be looking to think, “What are we going to get out of this, not just for the kit we need for our forces—what is the broader impact? What else can we do to secure prosperity, which, after all is a defence task, through the orders we place and how we go about it?” We will be taking that nuanced approach, looking at each one in turn, on a case-by-case basis, to see what can be achieved. Of course there will be occasions when off the shelf is the best option, but for every one that needs to be tested, considered and thought through. Secondly, I am very proud that we are going to be ensuring that social value is always applied to our tender process. So this will be a minimum of 10%. It will be compulsory from 1 June, in respect of DSPCR—Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011. This is about making certain that through that mechanism we catch the whole benefit that a procurement can make.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I strongly welcome my hon. Friend’s statement and the strategy, including what he outlined on the deepened working with industry and academia. Can he say how the strategy can help build the UK’s skills base in key STEM subjects, which is obviously very important for defence industries, but also for important parts of the wider civil economy?

[Jeremy Quin]

This is a great opportunity to build our skills base and our number of apprentices. My right hon. Friend will have heard what I said about FCAS and Team Tempest and that new generation coming through—people are very excited about the prospect of working on this new system—but it is broader than that. I particularly pay tribute to the work of the RAF across Wales in bringing on STEM skills. The whole of the armed forces are acutely aware that our future is going to be digital, cyber and highly technological, and we as a country need to have that STEM support. I know that this strategy, with its £6.6 billion minimum spend on R&D over the next four years, will help to deliver just that.