During a Defence Committee session, Defence Secretary John Healey outlined key challenges affecting the UK’s defence industrial capacity and provided insights into strategies to address them.
The discussion focused on long-term planning, industrial partnerships, and replenishing stockpiles of critical munitions.
Healey identified three main issues impacting the defence industry:
- Short-Term Contracts: Healey criticised the traditional contract-by-contract approach, describing it as unsustainable for leveraging private investment. He called for a shift to long-term partnerships between the Government, businesses, and trade unions, “If we want to leverage higher levels of private investment into defence… we have to be willing to have a long-term relationship and long-term strategy.”
- Overlooking Economic Impact: Healey spoke on the need to prioritise domestic economic benefits in procurement decisions, “We need to do more to recognise that defence has a vital role not just in strengthening our security, but in boosting our economy… where we can, we should look to develop our own British jobs and support British-based companies.”
- Procurement Delays: Highlighting lessons from Ukraine, Healey underscored the need for a more agile procurement system, “We simply cannot have a procurement system that may take several years even to get to the point of a contract.”
He also called for integrating smaller and medium-sized companies into the defence industrial base to enhance flexibility and innovation.
Replenishing Munitions Stockpiles
Responding to questions from MP Derek Twigg, Healey acknowledged that the UK remains some way off replenishing its munitions stockpiles, “To be fair to the previous Government, it is why they said, ‘Right, we now need a 10-year strategy to do that.’”
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Magowan provided additional context, highlighting a formal 10-year agreement with defence contractor MBDA for £6 billion in investments covering munitions like Aster and Storm Shadow. He explained the importance of a resilient “always on” approach to munitions supply, ensuring the ability to scale production quickly, “We need to be able to create a system whereby we can turn to industry… and say, ‘I want you to ramp up by X per cent within two months.’ We do not have that capability at the moment.”
Classified Briefing on Munitions Strategy
The Committee requested access to the classified munitions plan underpinning the strategy. Healey agreed to consider sharing the document within appropriate security constraints, “Let me have a look at the level of classification on that. It is not automatic that I can share everything that the Committee might want at every level of classification.”
The future
Despite the challenges, Healey expressed confidence in the UK’s ability to modernise its defence industrial strategy, citing lessons learned from the rapid development of Taskforce Kindred, which supported Ukraine, “We can do this… We can take some of those lessons into our own system and learn from them.”
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I’m not surprised.
The main damage was done under Blair where the previous long term replenishment contracts were turned to cod globalised spot market contracts. As this was ‘more efficient’
Then Blair got a shock from his attempt to have UK FMS tax when Washington said NO.
But Blair never rebuilt those supply chains as Brown wouldn’t fund MOD and Blair liked his moral wars.
I’m a bit unconvinced that a document this sensitive should be shared with a select committee- they leak like sieves and politicians are boastful of their knowledge.
We were all pretty surprised by how large a stockpile of NLAWS there actually was. Just as we’re were totally amazed at its 90% efficacy. There was a strong message there.
Good luck trying to get DE&S to engage with SME’s in a smart way.
As per the norm, they will want a 200 plus page response to any 2 page document they send out, and then discard the response as the company doesn’t have £10m plus in sales.
How unusual a set of well thought out comments based on reality, and without any Political Double Speak I doubt any of us can disagree with any of this. Now we wait and see how this translates into reality post SDR.
I don’t particularly like our PM but he has some very good people working for him, I just hope he can persuade the Treasury that we need to increase Defence expenditure.
We always seem to fixate on the Politicians and blame them for the repeated cuts over the last few decades, but it’s far more imbedded in the Whitehall CS muscle memory than most realise.
A former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury let slip on Radio 4 that every one in the treasury hates wasting money on Defence.
Good to hear that there is recognition that SME should play a greater role. I don’t really know how easy that is during ‘peacetime’ procurement but in a crisis/war situation they could be vital in ramping up production of some components or replacing damaged production facilities.
The MoD should hold a list of SMEs with a range of useful capabilities, such as CNC precision engineering, composites, electronics et etc. and should consider having some on a ‘rapid response’ retainer whereby they commit to be ready to take on production duties at short notice (something that can be tested, to ensure it works)
With so few production facilities we are vulnerable to sabotage, or direct attack should hostilities start.
Daylight saving !!! 😁 Our leaders and elites are really imbecilic.