Defence Industrial Strategy

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I know that the noble Lord has an opinion that not many people agree with, including me, but I appreciate that he puts it forward time and again in a respectful, calm and intellectual way. He is to be congratulated on that.

My argument to him would be this. There is a need to rearm and a defence industrial policy has to be geared towards the rearmament that needs to take place. I will give him one example, with which I know he will disagree. My premise is that it is a good thing that we are supporting Ukraine. Despite what we have been doing, with the defence industry as it was, we—not only us but other European countries—were not able to deliver the equipment necessary for Ukraine to do all that it wanted to do as easily as it could. That is a difficult, if not dangerous, position for us and our allies to be in.

I made this point at DSEI yesterday. I said that, as a Minister of State for the UK MoD, I do not want to be in a position where I believe in supporting Ukraine but read in the paper—as I did, going back probably a year—that Ukraine had had to withdraw because it did not have the necessary military equipment to continue the fight. That is not a situation we should be in. Part of dealing with that is to develop our defence industry and improve its capability and capacity, so we are not in a position where we cannot support those we would wish to support.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of Members’ interests re the defence sector. As has been said, there is much to welcome in this document, but we need a full day debate on the subject. To try to rush everything in 40 minutes or so is, frankly, ridiculous and an insult to the importance of it.

There is a small number of specific questions I would like to put to the Minister. First, there is no mention in the document—I found this disappointing—of the need to reduce the bloated number of civil servants already employed by the Ministry of Defence. What plans has the Minister got to streamline defence procurement personnel? Secondly, the very important role of the new National Armaments Director is a massive job and probably will be one of the most important in the UK. What sort of salary level are we talking about to attract the top people available? Page 18 of the strategy document, on resilience and reducing supply chain vulnerabilities, talks about an additional £1.5 billion in an “always on” pipeline for munitions. Could the Minister give me an indication of how that is arrived at? Finally, and this has not been touched on at all, have hugely important production sites in the UK, such as at Barrow, that are vital to our national defence. Is any thought being given to the protection of these key sites in the deployment of anti-missile systems and similar? There is nothing that I can see in the document about this and it is something we should begin to focus on.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. On his first point, about personnel, and his last point, about the security of sites, this is not the only defence document. There are defence documents that deal with personnel and what we might do about that. Similarly, there are reviews concerning the security of sites, partly because of Brize Norton but partly because we recognise there is a need for investment in that. He will see, over the next few months, various announcements made about the better protection of not only industrial sites but military bases—as he will with respect to personnel. That is the point I would make: not every single thing to do with defence is in the defence industrial strategy.

The National Armaments Director pillar exists only because of the defence reform we have introduced to create four pillars within the Ministry of Defence, of which the armaments director is one. The noble Lord is right about its importance. I do not know the exact figure—I can look it up and write to him—but it is the necessary salary. I remember looking at it and thinking it was a lot of money, but that is based on my idea of what a lot a money is. I thought it appropriate, let us put it that way.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

Will the Minister write to me?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I will put that in writing for the noble Lord.

The “always on” pipeline is about trying to ensure that we have a situation where we can always, if we need to, step up our production much more quickly, rather than be in a situation where we have to wait two years before we can do this or that. An “always on” pipeline means, in essence, that we can get the equipment and munitions we need quickly.