Defence Procurement: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
Debate between Fred Thomas and Graham Stringer(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Fred Thomas
The hon. Member is absolutely correct. It is not quite in my constituency—it is in the neighbouring constituency, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport—but I agree.
In terms of SMEs, primes can also offer a service to the Government and the Ministry of Defence. If we had a massive change in system, which would be extremely hard to execute, and the MOD was suddenly able to procure directly from SMEs across the country, we would have an enormous challenge of integrating the different capabilities into a usable platform. Half of the things would not be able to talk to each other; they would be made to do their one task and we would then try to put on top of them a second radar system or some piece of satellite that could speak down to whatever comms link we were using. That is enormously expensive. However, primes can do that integration. They can go to the Government and say, “You have a demand signal to do something,” rather than to have a particular capability—to monitor the North sea, for example—and then go out to the SMEs in different constituencies that hon. Members have highlighted so fantastically, gather various bits of capability and knit that into one big package to sell to the Government. That would feel more expensive and slower to the Government, but it could be cheaper in the long term, in some instances.
That said, I and colleagues are overwhelmed almost daily by individuals in the UK defence industry reaching out on LinkedIn or by email, begging the Government to listen to what they are offering. They are patriotic people who think they can save us money and give us strategic advantage by delivering a piece of capability, when we currently spend obscene amounts of money on something that sometimes does not work well or produce the desired effect. I would love the Minister to give us a sense of what the Government are going to do differently from previous Governments to actively offer a forum for those SMEs to pitch their capabilities. I am immensely proud of the Secretary of State and the Minister who joins us today for their work so far—
