The UK Government has announced a major initiative to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the defence sector, ensuring they benefit from the country’s historic increase in defence spending.
A new Defence SME Hub will be established to help small businesses access the defence supply chain, with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) setting direct SME spending targets by June this year.
The move follows the Government’s commitment to increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with a further ambition to reach 3% in the next Parliament.
The Government has stated that this investment will bolster national security, create new jobs, and drive economic growth across the country.
The initiative, say Labour, aims to increase SME involvement in the UK defence sector, which has historically been dominated by large contractors. Currently, only 4% of MOD spending goes to SMEs, despite nearly 70% of overall defence spending supporting businesses outside London and the South East.
The new SME Hub will provide:
- Guidance for small businesses on entering the defence supply chain
- Support to raise finance and train workers
- Increased access to government defence contracts
Prime Minister Keir Starmer highlighted the economic benefits of increased defence spending, stating: “The UK’s defence industry is a source of national pride. It supports hundreds of thousands of good jobs up and down the country and represents British manufacturing at its best. Increasing our investment in defence is not only bolstering our national security, but it is also an opportunity to put more money into working people’s pockets and boost economic growth.”
The initiative will have a major impact on Scotland, where the MOD currently spends £2.14 billion annually, including £32 million with SMEs, directly supporting more than 11,000 jobs.
Scottish Secretary Ian Murray underlined the significance of Scotland’s role in the plan:
“The Prime Minister has been clear – we must up our game on defence. Scotland’s world-class defence industry will play a big role in meeting that challenge.”
He added:
“Driving economic growth and ensuring our national security are UK Government priorities. The skills, expertise and innovation in Scotland’s defence industry will play an increasingly crucial role in delivering our Plan for Change, and keeping our country safe.”
Defence Secretary John Healey commented on the Government’s ambition to make defence an engine for economic growth, saying:
“For too long small businesses felt locked out of defence, but we’ve listened and we’re acting. Today’s announcement will ensure that smaller firms benefit from increased defence spending, attracting new suppliers and fast-tracking the technologies of the future into the hands of our Armed Forces.”
The Government has also highlighted the regional impact of defence spending, pointing to significant increases in defence investment across the UK, including a 30% rise in the East Midlands (£328 million) and a 20% increase in Northern Ireland.
No comments option in the new articles?
The site’s been working only intermittently in the past few days, so the replies upgrade seems to have affected it.
The same happened before the reply notifications got removed last time.
Yes, it appears some upgrade has gone wrong.
First noticed with “Bad Gateway” messages over the weekend due to extremely slow performance, and now no comments on latest articles.
Yes, I’ve also got comments “awaiting moderation” for more than 24 hours, whilst more recent comments are appearing.
So theory here:
The old comments section had a habit of crashing the site according to George.
I suspect he tried to bring back some functionality from the old system, immediately had the site crash (not helped by a lot of bot posting). And then paused all commenting while he tried to revert everything to a stable platform, closing comments sections and putting comments on moderation.
George, Lisa and Tom don’t really moderate the comments section much, I believe they’ve stated the volume of discussion is just too much, so comments that where flagged for moderation while George was making sure everything is stable again are still in the backlog. Newer comments made after George unlocked the system again don’t go into moderation, so don’t need to wait for the UKDJ team to unlock them (if they ever get round to it).
Problem is, replies still aren’t working so we’re back where we were before now
@SB
Yes seems like we might be stuck with thr shitty comment system. As for articles with no comments thread…. I’m looking and thinking George is disabling comment threads that might attract Russian bots?
Only thing I can think of.
It would be nice if George could tell us all what has been happening.
@GH agreed, but I also get it, small team, can either work on fixing or communicating.
AH, so it’s not just me..?
Yeah, I thought it might be better to check than sit there in silence waiting for the problem to fix itself!
I’d hope George and company would notice the issue before people had to start commenting about it.
What is unbelievable is that they’ve not posted a “apologies for the technical issues” explanation while they try and fix things. They can obviously still post, as shown by the new news articles, but appear to be pretending there aren’t any issues…
The comments section is only a tiny fraction of the readership, I think, so it probably isn’t as much of a priority as writing new articles.
But it is inconvenient and it would be nice to have an explanation and overview of the system.
Test
All these extra initiatives to make procurement more efficient, more inclusive and expand our defence industry just seems to add more layers of CS.
Has anyone ever taken a step back from the Westminster, Merry Go round of increasing the CS, adding lots of activity and achieving just more cost ?
I’ll pose a question has anyone compared how we do things with a comparable sized country, with similar capabilities who just seem to achieve far more than us with a slightly smaller budget ? How do the French manage it !
CASD 100% French including the SLBM.
100% home grown Tactical Nuclear Weapons (2 types).
More Combat Aircraft than U.K
Heading towards more Airlift than U.K.
Larger Army than U.K (but also weak in MBTs).
Heading towards a Larger Navy than the U.K.
A very strong Defence Industry that’s pretty well self reliant for everything and exports all over the world.
The answer is probably No 🤦🏼♂️