British Industry and Services: Public Procurement

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I welcome the noble Earl’s new commitment—maybe it is not new —to supply chains and to where components come from. Many of these contracts were signed by previous Governments. We have had many discussions, not least with the noble Earl, about the role of Uyghur labour, which is abhorrent and needs to be taken out of the supply chain. However, we need sovereign capability to replace it with. As I said, that includes sovereign skills capability and investment in manufacturing. People need certainty about contracts coming forward; that has to be delivered too.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, a central tenet of the UK’s national shipbuilding policy is that we have a drumbeat of orders through UK shipyards, recognising that 38p of every pound put in by the taxpayer comes back directly in tax and national insurance. Can my noble friend explain why the Department for Transport is considering offshoring the replacements for Trinity House vessels and the Home Office is considering placing orders in Holland for patrol vessels? Much of that work will not be done in Europe but will be subcontracted to the Far East. Have these departments somehow not got the memo from the Treasury?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that every memo sent by my department will be actively read by every other department. On shipbuilding, the noble Lord is absolutely right—when we were Members of the other place, I sat with the noble Lord through many debates on exactly this issue. On the immediate action that we are taking, we have created the pathfinder sector through the national security exemption in the Procurement Act. The MoD is one of those departments, and we have put a commercial lead in place specifically to look at shipbuilding. I would expect that sector lead to work across government departments to deliver in the way that my noble friend discussed.