Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and I well remember visiting the Sierra Nevada Corporation with him last year—it was an eye opener. I hope that it is seeing opportunities from various changes to the Army, including the ranges. I am sure those there will be putting their minds to it. We will be publishing later this year a refresh of our small and medium-sized enterprises action plan. I am proud that we have driven up the amount of funds going to SMEs to more than 19%, from about 13% in 2013-14. There is more work to be done, and in order to help that process not only are we ensuring that we are maintaining DASA—the Defence and Security Accelerator—a fantastic process of providing seedcorn funding to develop smaller companies and give opportunities to help the MOD—but we will be expanding from Northern Ireland to across the whole UK the defence technology accelerator, which has been working very well in Northern Ireland. It helps to exploit and pull through technology that is being developed by smaller companies. So there will be a package of support and an SME action plan will be produced later this year.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I welcome today’s publication of the defence strategy. Sadly, it is 11 years late; for the past few years it has been called for. The UK has rightly got an open defence market, which has led to innovation, investment and world-beating kit for our armed forces, but it has also been used as an opportunity by the Treasury, in particular, and the MOD to buy off the shelf from overseas nations, without any commitment at all to investment in jobs and technology in this country. What steps is the Minister going to take to implement the very good recommendations in the report from the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) on prosperity? How will that have an effect and ensure that jobs and investment go into the UK, rather than have the simple, knee-jerk reaction from the Treasury always to buy from abroad?

[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.