Speeches by Pollard.

“I am hoping that now the elections are out of the way in Scotland we can have those conversations in person soon. I know that the officials already correspond regular around both the Scottish growth deal and the other aspects of the Industrial Strategy that apply to Scotland. We have good, official level conversations;…”

“I will let Calum come in on the details of how the passports interact. As defence has been identified as a key industrial sector in the modern industrial strategy, we are developing the defence jobs plan effectively in there. It needs to mesh with all the other key industrial strategies and jobs plans to make sure that…”

“The £50 million of MOD funding for the Scottish defence growth deal is still being spent in Scotland.”

“So £50 million for Plymouth rather than for Portsmouth.”

“Yes, and we need to continue that. We have had correspondence with the new economic lead, Stephen Flynn, now. He is in Scotland, rather than Westminster, for these affairs but I am keen that we do because I think there is a shared opportunity here of increased growth and employment in defence, especially addressing ear…”

“Yes, and so that is part of our £250 million UK-wide commitment to those five growth deals. They were allocated by my predecessor before I took this particular role on in the last reshuffle. We will continue to spend that, and we have seen the first tranche announcements of that, for example, the £5 million that has go…”

“We broadly agree with you that we want to see two in Scotland: one in the east, one in the west. Where we have announced them in England, so if you take Blackpool and The Fylde College as an example, which is one of the DTECs that we have announced in England, although the hub is in Blackpool they are working with coll…”

“Yes, we have had a reply from Stephen Flynn and we have responded to the points in there. That letter has gone off to him and I hope that we can find a way of concluding this shortly. I recognise that to do so we need the Scottish Government and the UK Government working together. I think that is something that can hap…”

“Absolutely, yes.”

“I will bring Calum in to answer the details on the skills passport in particular. I want to see more focus on mid-career reskilling. The prioritisation of our skills work is of course on early careers—FE skills, HE skills, recent graduates, and FE apprenticeships—and that will produce the biggest early impact. But we k…”

“There is a risk that if we do not have skills investment across the entire supply chain what you will see is primes being able to support their skills base, a hollowing out of adjacent industries and a hollowing out of supply chain. Ultimately that is not good for economic growth, it is not good for our economy, and it…”

“I think there are two different areas that you might be confused there. The five growth deals that we have across the UK are £50 million each. They do not require match funding; they have £50 million in there. There is an opportunity to crowd fund and match fund more to make a bigger output for it. Where we have had a …”

“I know. I thought we were friends. For all our five growth deals we are in the process at the moment of working with the Government structure that have been set up there to set out what that will be delivered against. I am hoping that all growth deals—South Yorkshire, Plymouth, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland—wil…”

“That is right. I make the distinction between areas where I think a cut and thrust and political differences can hold things up, and areas where those people that are lucky enough to be in political office, knowing the threats arising, have the opportunity to work together. I am very keen to work with the Scottish Gove…”

“If you are looking for recommendations as a Committee, the North West Regional Defence and Security Cluster is a good example of a cluster that is doing great work, empowering SMEs and pushing them forwards, and where you can see the behaviour of primes having changed because it is easier for them to interact with SMEs…”

“I will bring Calum in, in a moment, because his team is one of the broad teams that have been working on the Defence Office for Small Business Growth. The reason we stood it up in the first place—to get at why we are doing this—is because we want to spend more money with SMEs and we know from the engagement that I did …”

“I want to see more private capital in defence. Although there will be reference to that at a high level in the defence investment plan, the Defence Finance and Investment Strategy will broadly set out that wider approach as to how we crowd in private capital from the different capital markets that are available, and in…”

“Broadly, nearly all defence contracts that go to a prime include SMEs. It is very rare that even things that are very associated with a single, large prime are only built within the prime. The supply chain that supports those are quite considerable. For instance, the radar upgrades for the Typhoons, that goes to a big …”

“I do not want to see the MOD delay any payments. We are consistent across Government that we should be paying uncontested invoices within 30 days. We aim to pay uncontained invoices within five days and that is the movement in the system we are trying to get at. There is a distinction here between where we agree and wh…”

“The answer is kind of yes and no on that one. Yes, there might be an efficiency in placing larger orders but one of the things that we deliberately try to do is sometimes separate large orders into smaller parcels so you can enable more SMEs to compete for them. I guess the answer is: on a case-by-case basis. The argum…”