Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 10 March to Question 34903 on Defence: Procurement, whether he has met with any representatives from British SMEs regarding the Defence Small and Medium Enterprise Support Hub.

I regularly engage with representatives of the defence industry, including SMEs. For example at DSEI and DPRTE I engaged with over 20 SMEs at those two events alone.

Further to that, SMEs have been widely consulted in the development of the Office for Small Business Growth to ensure that the new service meets defence SMEs needs and fully integrates with support offered to smaller companies by other organisations and Government Departments.