Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012: Trade and Investment

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his supplementary on his supplementary on his supplementary question. Time will allow me to deal with only one of them, but I thank him for everything that he did, and of course I thank people for everything that they did cross-party to promote British business. I am leading something called the GREAT campaign, which I hope has been well advertised in this country and abroad. That is a good platform for showing people our great country.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, there has been welcome news and we on this side congratulate all those concerned. Will the Minister please give us some facts? What proportion of the sales or trade that took place at those meetings is arms-related? Will he also give a sense of what proportion of what was left went to SMEs in this country?

[Lord Marland]

The noble Lord will know that arms-related sales do not happen overnight. There are long congestion periods. If we look at the activity on Typhoon, decisions about such huge amounts of money are not made quickly. Clearly, we have a remarkable defence industry, of which we are proud and which is at the cutting edge of world technology. I have no doubt that it will be making sales throughout the world. On the defence front, I can say that I was privileged to lead a mission advising people on cybersecurity around the Middle East and orders are coming in thick and fast.