James Cartlidge

I am grateful to the Minister for early sight of both his statement and the hard copy document. Before I respond to the statement, may I express on behalf of the Opposition our wholehearted condemnation of the latest drone attack on Kyiv, the largest of the war, with small children among the dead? It is a reminder of why we need to step up and rearm at pace and scale, to strengthen our deterrence in a dangerous world. The strategy’s statement of intent, published last December stated: “The Defence Industrial Strategy will be developed at pace...and will be published in late Spring 2025”. It is now autumn—it has been delayed when we need real pace from the Government, and that is part of a pattern. Some 26 times Ministers promised on the Floor of the House that the strategic defence review would be published in the spring, but it was published in the summer. The defence housing strategy was promised for the summer, and we now understand that it will be published as late as the Christmas recess. Can the Minister guarantee that the defence industrial policy will be published this year? It is not just Labour’s reviews that are being published far later than promised. The SDR promised that a National armaments director would be in place from 1 April 2025. On page 6, and as the Minister just said, the defence industrial strategy states that “we have created the role of National armaments director”. If the Government have created the role, could they kindly tell us the name? Is Andy Start the interim NAD, or is he the new permanent empowered NAD? If so, is he on his previous salary, or the much higher one for the new role? Key appointments and strategies—months late. War is changing rapidly, but Labour is moving far too slowly. On the contents of the defence industrial strategy, we welcome further measures to boost the skills base of our defence sector. While we will wait to see the full details of the growth deals, we strongly share the Government’s goal of spreading the prosperity benefits of defence around the United Kingdom. Can the Minister tell us when those will be up and running, and whether the £250 million investment represents new money that was not previously included in the MOD budget? I also welcome measures to boost defence exports, not least establishing a real Government-to-Government offer, and restoring the defence export team back into the MOD—that is something I was working on, and I am glad the Government are implementing it. Our main concern about the strategy is that it lacks the ambition to fire up our defence industrial base at the scale and pace required, at a time when the threats we face are so stark. The blunt reality is that, for all Labour’s talk, actual procurement has been largely on hold since the election, with the now notorious written answer confirming in spring that the Government had purchased just three new drones since the election last July. Quite simply, they need to start signing actual capability contracts. Thousands of jobs are at stake in some of those major procurements that were meant to have been resolved in the SDR, but on which we still await a decision. For example, on Friday I had the pleasure to visit Leonardo in Yeovil, the cornerstone of UK military rotary. It is clear that the New Medium Helicopter procurement is critical to its future. When I announced the NMH competition, I deliberately strengthened tender scoring to support defence jobs here in the UK. Are the Government still committed to NMH? If so, when will they give the green light? We hope that will be at the Defence and Security Equipment International. For that matter, when will we see further progress on Skynet, the Red Arrows replacement, M270 artillery and the many other key decisions that the industry is waiting on? We want to see pace in procurement, not endless dithering and delay. However, we all know the reason why the waiting goes on for so many UK defence companies, large and small: the Government have not prioritised boosting defence spending meaningfully in the near term. Instead, they use smoke and mirrors to inflate what appears to be going into the MOD. For example, the Government reclassified the intelligence budget into defence, so that they can claim to be spending 2.6% by 2027, when the reality is that the MOD budget—that which actually funds the equipment plan—will be equivalent to only 2.2% of GDP in that same year. While key procurement decisions continue to be put off, tomorrow Labour will plough on as fast as possible with surrendering sovereignty of our critical defence base on Diego Garcia at a cost of £35 billion. The first payment is of £250 million next year and I can safely say that, instead of giving that to the Government of Mauritius, we would spend the money on rapid procurement of drones and counter-drone tech for the British Army from our brilliant British defence SMEs. That is what we wanted to see from today’s strategy—the delivery of a strong, sovereign drone industrial base, and the same for space, rotary, military vehicles and so many others, as well as artificial intelligence and tech. Warm words delivered late are not enough. We need to see a real-world ramping up of the defence industrial base, with serious investment and not smoke and mirrors, the prioritisation of UK defence companies, and a rapid boost in our ability to deter the rising threats we face.