National Armaments Director

John Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

I have been banging on like a howitzer—well, maybe like a small-bore cannon—about the need to mobilise British industry as we ramp up for possible conflict in an increasingly hostile world. I welcome the news that the new national armaments director is being resourced to oversee the alliance between our military brains and brawn and the sinews of the British defence industry.

Civilians talk tactics, but veterans talk logistics, for old warriors know that a modern army marches not so much on its stomach, as in the days of Wellington and Napoleon, as on a very long supply chain, anchored mainly in small and medium-sized enterprises. That extends—to use the military’s favourite phrase—to all domains.

We have had recent sharp lessons on the reality of modern warfare, from the muddy hell of trenches in occupied Ukraine to the arid highlands of Iran. We have seen high-tech systems—drones, cyber, space and stealth—undergo a baptism of fire. We have also seen weapons that would have been familiar to my infantryman grandfather on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915 plying their old trade to deadly effect; artillery remains the queen of the battlefield. While our sailors, soldiers and aircrew are the tip of the spear, the essential shaft is our factories and shipyards, and every corner of the country can play its full part. I say “every part”, but there is bad news from Scotland under the yoke of the SNP, where the nationalists and their Green party fellow travellers have engendered a hostile environment for defence firms. We have seen young apprentices denied entrance to the Holyrood Parliament by an elected representative tipped to lead the Greens; and, in recent days, we have seen former First Minister Humza Yousaf—still an MSP—blundering around on the world stage, shroud-waving about it being a war crime to allow US military aircraft to refuel at Prestwick airport, and bemoaning the proscription of the saboteurs of Palestine Action.

There is a presumption, as we heard from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), that the Scottish Government will not channel funding towards ordnance—a battlefield prerequisite. That has led this Government to step in and say that they will help to fund a new Rolls-Royce centre of welding excellence on the Clyde, which will be key to submarine and warship building.

The stakes could not be higher. Scotland is already a defence powerhouse. Umbrella body ADS estimates that 16,250 people in Scotland work in the sector, producing Royal Navy warships, cutting-edge radars, optronic masts—do not dare call them mere periscopes—for submarines and smart missiles such as Storm Shadow. Even my rural constituency of Dumfries and Galloway produces the helmets vital to the sensor suite on F-35 Lightning fighter bombers, of which we are purchasing 12 more nuclear-capable Alpha variants.

Figures from 2023 show that the Ministry of Defence spends £370 per person living in Scotland. It is—or ought to be—Britain’s arsenal, and as such, Scotland should be top of the national armaments director’s in-tray, yet firms wanting to set up the new ordnance factories recommended in the strategic defence review, or seeking to expand in order to fulfil new MOD orders, cannot count on financial support via the Scottish Government. Whose side is Scotland’s First Minister on? Will the Minister tell the House what powers the new armaments director will have to eliminate the Scottish Government’s reckless fifth columnist policies on defence?