Emma Reynolds

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) on securing this debate. I also thank the Chair of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their contributions. I am going to embarrass a few people now. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Mrs Brackenridge), who is one of my successors in a seat I represented between 2010 and 2019. It was great to hear about the success of Collins Aerospace, which is in that constituency. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) and for Hampstead and Highgate (Tulip Siddiq), as well as the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), for their interventions. Today’s discussion and the fantastic speech from my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer have highlighted the complexities and challenges we face in ensuring that our defence sector is robust enough to protect our national security and support our growth mission, which is the No. 1 mission of this Government. In recent years, the world has been reshaped by global geopolitical instability, including Russia’s aggression and its illegal invasion of Ukraine—a war on our continent—as well as increasing threats from malign actors. This, combined with the challenging economic and fiscal context, makes it essential that we address the barriers to finance in the defence sector, so I thank my hon. Friend again for securing this debate in Westminster Hall. National security is the first duty of the Government, as highlighted in our plan for change. We have demonstrated our commitment in recent announcements, such as the Prime Minister committing to reach defence spending of 2.5% of GDP from April 2027. As he said at Prime Minister’s questions today, the last time the UK reached that level of spending was under the last Labour Government. Our ambition is to reach 3% of GDP in the next Parliament, as economic and fiscal conditions allow. Given that uplift in defence spending and the challenging fiscal and economic context we find ourselves in, this Government want to ensure that the defence sector contributes to achieving our No. 1 mission of economic growth. The Chancellor reiterated that message at the spring statement, when she announced a package of defence and growth-focused measures. That included the creation of a new organisation, UK Defence Innovation, with the explicit aim of supporting the scale-up of SMEs, start-ups and non-traditional defence suppliers, enabling them to grow and thrive, fostering an innovative defence tech ecosystem and crowding in private capital. As has been discussed in this excellent debate, we have been made aware of a number of financing issues in the defence sector, and I will come on to them shortly. I will first respond to the final part of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer, on the proposals for a multilateral defence bank. I thank him for drawing our attention to these proposals, and I thank Rob Murray, the founder of the multilateral Defence, Security and Resilience bank, who has been liaising with the Government and championing this proposal. We recognise the issues that my hon. Friend raised today. We are looking carefully at the proposals and actively discussing with our allies a range of multilateral options. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate mentioned the EU, and I should say that we are looking forward to the UK-EU leaders’ summit on 19 May. We welcome the EU’s efforts to bolster Europe’s defence, including the ambitions set out in the ReArm Europe package and the defence White Paper. We have been clear that we are keen to work with EU allies on common challenges to our shared security. The Chancellor discussed this with counterparts at the G20 in February, and we are discussing the shared challenges with our European partners. I cannot comment in detail on those discussions at this time, but we will continue to work together with our European allies on this incredibly important issue. My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer talked about some of the spillover effects, and I assure him that the Treasury and the MOD are keen to maximise spillovers and synergies between the civil and military sectors for both economic growth and military reasons. We are considering how to maximise these benefits as we develop the defence industrial strategy. My hon. Friend mentioned a number of issues to do with defence companies’ access to finance, and I welcome the recent meeting he held with our hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Alex Baker) at Guildhall in the City. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry was present at that meeting, as were representatives of the defence sector and a number of trade associations representing the City and financial services. My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer brings to this House a great wealth of experience in financial services, from both a firm and a regulatory perspective, so he will know that decisions regarding the provision of financial services to businesses are a commercial matter; banks and insurers need to make an assessment of the relevant risks and conduct appropriate due diligence. However, we are very clear that no company should be denied access to financial services purely on the basis that it works in defence. I encourage all defence firms to read the very helpful guidance published by UK Finance and ADA Group. It is excellent to see the trade associations coming together, working from the different perspectives of the defence sector and finance, to produce that guidance.