Dave Doogan
Main Page: Dave Doogan (Scottish National Party - Angus and Perthshire Glens)Department Debates - View all Dave Doogan's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(1 day, 17 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Healey
The short answer is yes. The slightly longer answer is that that we are doing so with close allies. We are also doing so with Ukraine. The right hon. Gentleman has been one of the voices in this House that has pushed us to do more with Ukrainian industry, and I know he will welcome our groundbreaking agreement with Ukraine, through which it will share for the first time with another country its intellectual property for the critical interceptor drone called Octopus. We will develop that further, manufacture those drones at scale within weeks and months, and return thousands to Ukraine to help its fight against Putin.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Ministry of Defence spent £1.2 billion with SMEs in 2024-25. Sadly, though, only 2.5% of that spending went to SMEs in Scotland, which report extreme difficulty in accessing those MOD contracts. This is an inevitable consequence of the MOD spending more in one region of England than it spends in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland put together. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is an undesirable outcome, and what steps will he take to increase SME expenditure by the MOD in Scotland to at least Scotland’s per capita share, which is what it contributes to the cost of defence?
John Healey
The first useful step, of course, would be for the Scottish nationalist Government to lift their bar on any support for defence and associated firms. One of the biggest problems for SMEs in the defence field in Scotland is that they cannot get any support from their own Government, despite the big contribution that those SMEs make to jobs, opportunities and security, not just for Scotland and the UK.