Speeches by Pollard.

“There is regular skills engagement with officials. Calum and his team have a lot of engagement with Scottish Government officials, indeed, as we do with the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive. There is not a formal political moment at the political level at the moment. I hope we can achieve that becaus…”

“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 …”

“It has been a key policy that we have adopted since coming to office that we want more of an increasing defence budget spent with British-based companies. Quite uniquely as one part of the United Kingdom, Scotland has nearly every single major prime—I think it has every major prime—compared to other regions that might …”

“Defence policy is a reserved matter, so the core defence policy is run out of the Ministry of Defence in London. Where it comes to the enabling policies—industry, skills, everything including planning, for instance—we do maintain a good official level conversation. I would like to see more political level conversations…”

“It is worth saying that Scotland is not the only devolved Administration that we work in, and I want to see a similar approach tailored to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but broadly we need to have regular contact between the men and women in uniform and the devolved administrations for MOD officials and across …”

“It is worth saying that within the defence industry, because of the nature of it, quite a lot of those roles are for UK citizens only. Where we have brought in the enhanced English language requirements in immigration, that is to encourage greater interoperability with society. Also, importantly, it is to reflect the f…”

“Let me start with a really simple one: that a career in defence is a good career. I think there has been a culture within the MOD for too long where we have not told our story. I don’t want defence companies giving away the secret squirrel aspects of what they work on. I want them talking about how a career in defence …”

“Within the defence investment plan, although it is quite high level, for obvious reasons, and does not go into line item spend, there will be a total figure for how much DNE is being allocated as part of the defence investment plan. Some of those items can be broken out from that. A number of those, for obvious reasons…”

“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…”

“I entirely agree. In Armed Forces Week, as we are now, there are activities right across Scotland in support of our service personnel. I think because the threat is growing and it is real, and we are talking more about it, it is not just something that happens further afield. It is not just something that is happening …”

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

“Thank you, Chair. It is good to see you all today and the interest that you are taking in defence in Scotland. The threat that we are facing is real and it is growing. The strategic defence review that Lord Robertson helped co-author with the other SDR leads sets that out very clearly. We responded to that by adopting …”

“I am aware that many of my colleagues in the Commons are very keen on defence bonds. If I am honest I have not seen the detail from the party yet provided to enable me to look at that fully. I entirely understand the logic that says, “We need more defence spending.” I agree. I want to see more defence spending. How you…”

“That is what the defence industrial strategy sets out. The MOD traditionally did not invest in skills; the assumption was that the supply chain either invested in skills—be they primes or smaller businesses—or it was provided by different education settlements across the UK, but broadly that. What was apparent is to ge…”

“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…”

“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 am a proper space nerd, so I could fill your entire two-hour session just talking about this. I agree broadly that we need to update our space strategies. The space strategy that the last Government published was a good strategy for the time, but then the sector accelerated past it quite quickly. DSIT, which is the l…”

“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…”

“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 am expecting that to be in the defence investment plan.”