A House of Lords committee has said political leadership driven by the Prime Minister is needed to force a culture change at the Ministry of Defence, warning the government must move faster to be ready for military action within a thousand days, according to the committee.
The cross-party Industry and Regulators Committee, in its report ‘Ready for action in 1,000 days? Forging a new partnership between Government and the defence industry’, calls for faster procurement, a less risk-averse approach to new technology, an easier route in for small firms and the training of the skilled workers the industry needs.
It welcomes the government’s adoption of the Strategic Defence Review’s call for a new partnership with industry and the major structural changes made so far, but warns that investors need certainty and confidence, and that the MoD must show it can respond to change and all parts of government, including the Treasury, must accept the new approach. The report cites the Defence Secretary’s warning that Britain must be ready to fight or deter within a thousand days and the Chancellor’s promise to reach 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030.
The committee wants the government to report annually to Parliament from June 2027 on its performance against the targets in the Defence Industrial Strategy, and to accept greater risk in procurement to get new technology to the front line. It calls for clear expectations of how prime contractors spend with and treat small firms in their supply chains, enough resources for the Defence Office for Small Business Growth to act as a single front door, and an indicative multi-year pipeline of defence work.
It also urges the government to weight procurement towards UK companies, including requiring substantial UK manufacturing and use of UK supply chains, to contract enough industrial capacity to produce and adapt drones in a conflict, to report each year on vulnerabilities in critical inputs that cannot be sourced in Britain, to set out how thousands of skilled workers will be developed, and to protect defence staff, facilities and buildings from malign actors.
Baroness Hayter, chair of the committee, said: “Last year the Strategic Defence Review called for a new relationship between government and the defence industry to reflect the urgency of rebuilding the UK’s defence strength to meet the challenges and changing nature of warfare demonstrated so clearly by the war in Ukraine.
“Whilst we welcome recognition of the need for change within the Ministry of Defence, it must accelerate, embrace new technologies and enhance the role of SMEs, whilst ensuring the skilled workforce needed to deliver this change.
“With ongoing threats from Russia and other malign actors, the Government must show the necessary leadership and move at pace to achieve the Defence Secretary’s target of being ready for action within 1,000 days and use the 1 December Defence Investment Summit to provide certainty to business to drive the new partnership forward.”
The committee has asked the government to report on its progress by the end of 2027, and a government response is expected early next year. The MoD launched the Defence Office for Small Business Growth to open up defence work to smaller firms, and peers have pressed ministers on a wartime mindset as small suppliers complain of delays. Luke Pollard, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, has said the procurement system he inherited was broken.
