Defence Procurement: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this topic forward. He is absolutely right to recognise the importance of SMEs and what they can do. In Northern Ireland, Thales invented and produced the NLAW— the next-generation light anti-tank weapon—which slowed down the Russian advance; Thales is also at the forefront of cybersecurity, and all those things are very important. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, when it comes to supporting all SMEs across the United Kingdom—those 434,000 jobs—Northern Ireland must be an integral part of that? I know that is what the hon. Gentleman and the Minister think, and it really is the way forward.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. This debate is for an hour and is well-subscribed, so I ask hon. Members to be brief in their interventions.

[Alan Strickland]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. He is absolutely right that the commitment of Ministers and the defence industrial strategy to sovereign supply must include all parts of our United Kingdom, including the excellent capabilities in Northern Ireland.

Being war-ready for conflicts we cannot predict that will use technology that has not yet been invented, means giving our military the agility and capability to adapt to this changing landscape. Changing the way in which we think about defence procurement is central to this. My second point is around adopting a proactive, entrepreneurial approach to acquiring the defence supplies we need.

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[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. We will start with a three-minute time limit on speeches.

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[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—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

We have gained a few minutes. I ask the Minister to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the proposer of the debate to wind up.