Lord Coaker DSEI 2025 Opening Keynote Speech

Thank you for that heat welcome and welcome to all of you right here this morning.

Thank you to everybody who has been concerned in placing DSEI 2025 collectively, each from Grant’s staff and from every of the exhibitors for bringing such a formidable showcase of defence know-how to our capital.

We come collectively as a sector buoyed by an enormous vote of confidence, with the Norwegian authorities’s resolution simply final week to put an order for a minimum of 5 UK-made Type 26 frigates.

Providing a lift for his or her anti-submarine warfare capabilities, a lift for our shared safety within the North Sea, and a £10 billion increase for ship constructing on the Clyde, for UK jobs and for our economic system, simply one in every of our success tales that each one of you might be contributing to.

Could I take this chance to thank Maria Eagle MP, as the previous Procurement Minister for all of her work.

I do know our defence industries underpin our armed forces. They underpin our nationwide safety, but additionally they’re underpinned by many households and communities up and down the nation, and we thank them as nicely.

And we thank all of our worldwide mates and colleagues right here as nicely. And should you take a look at the variety of capabilities on show this week which can be passing essential milestones right here at DSEI, you’ll shortly understand how every can also be an enormous of our regional economies throughout the UK.
On the MBDA stand, you’ll discover the primary public show of the British-led European collaboration, next-generation stealth cruise missiles developed in Stevenage, Filton and Bolton.

General Dynamics are unveiling their a lot anticipated infantry preventing automobile variant of Ajax, made in Merthyr. A automobile program that has overcome its earlier hurdles to grow to be a prized asset of the British military. Also on show right here is the Patria six by six.

And I’m additionally delighted to verify that the UK will probably be becoming a member of the Common Armoured Vehicle Systems Technical Agreement to broaden our understanding and choices.

So as Minister, I’ll do every part I can to again British-based defence companies to make sure extra areas and extra employees prosper from this golden period of defence spending right here within the UK and throughout Europe and the globe.

I’d like to focus on among the issues that we’ve got finished in a short while.

The greatest improve in defence spending for generations.

A Strategic Defence Review that places our armed forces on an accelerated path to struggle preventing readiness, with multimillion kilos price of investments in drones AI and autonomy and a broadened nuclear functionality.

We’ve delivered the UK’s largest ever bundle of assist for Ukraine, strengthened NATO and all of our key alliances and partnerships.

And we’ve delivered on our promise to rewrite the contract between the general public and those who serve. Investing £7 billion in Armed Forces lodging throughout this parliament and delivering the largest uplift in Armed Forces pay for many years.

Establishing the Office of Veterans Affairs and establishing the brand new Armed Forces Commissioner tasked in regulation to be a really unbiased voice for our service personnel and their households, and unveiling our Defense Industrial Strategy.

I’m pleased with the progress we made to make our forces match for all area warfare, proud to be enhancing situations for our service personnel and their households.

And as a result of our armed forces are solely as robust as the availability traces and defence industries that stand behind them, yesterday, we had been proud to current our Defence Industrial Strategy to Parliament.

Delivering on a manifesto dedication with a Strategy that cements a brand new partnership with business constructed on reform, innovation and progress. That will make sure the defence dividend from our authorities’s document defence funding is felt by communities throughout the UK via new jobs and rising incomes.

Our Defence Industrial Strategy is a blueprint for a sector that doesn’t simply promote to authorities, however develops and delivers capabilities in partnership with authorities.

A sector with elevated functionality and capability and the power to surge that capability. A sector with resilient provide chains on the slicing fringe of defence know-how that innovates quicker and exports extra, sustained by a pipeline of expert, homegrown expertise.

This imaginative and prescient is not only a daring ambition. In our more and more harmful world, it’s a nationwide safety crucial essential to develop the improved safety that we dedicated to ship in our Strategic Defence Review.

And after I name it’ ‘our’ defence technique, I don’t simply imply the federal government’s, I imply all of ours. Because it was formed by the sector, formed by lots of you, together with companies, each huge and small, who took half in 40 session classes with ministers and senior officers and submitted over 200 written responses.

A key dedication on this Strategy is to proceed that dialog as we work collectively to draw funding, foster innovation and to develop exports.

And we’re already delivering on our technique, with that rising defence funds and actual reforms as the largest shake up of the MOD in over 50 years.

We introduced correct accountability to defence procurement by creating the function of the National Armaments Director.

And we’re placing a brand new emphasis on early business engagement, bringing transparency to the Acquisition Pipeline with the five-year forecast of deliberate packages.

Scaling up wargaming between army planners and the UK defence business and opening a brand new Office of Defence Exports inside the MOD to assist British business to exit and win on the worldwide stage and to ship extra authorities to authorities export offers.

We’ve dedicated to halving procurement timescales. With a most 5 years for gear packages and three years for digital.

We are dedicated to greater than halving the regulatory burden on the sector and reviewing export licensing insurance policies in order that we proceed to satisfy our worldwide obligations while higher enabling our corporations to pursue export alternatives.

To speed up the event of superior defence applied sciences we’ve launched our UK Defence Innovation with a £400 million funds.

As we make investments greater than £4 billion in autonomous techniques this parliament, and practically an extra billion in directed power weapons, with a hoop fenced 10% of our procurement funds earmarked for creating novel applied sciences.

To assist unfold the advantages of that funding in innovation throughout the sector, we’re launching a devoted defence Office for Small Business Growth, and have raised our SME spending goal by 50%. That implies that the MOD is to spend £7.5 billion with SMEs by 2028.

And having requested taxpayers throughout the nation to again our Armed Forces as we increase defence spending to 2.6% of GDP by 2027 and a goal of three.5% by 2035 alongside our NATO allies.

It is true that British individuals ought to see the advantages from that elevated funding. Not simply in elevated safety, but additionally within the type of elevated alternatives of their communities.

And that’s what our Defence Industrial Strategy offers them. A authorities assured to again British-based business, British innovation and British jobs.

We’ve ring fenced a brand new annual £11 billion ‘Invest’ funds, and tasked our National Armaments Director with the dual goals of equipping our frontline forces while additionally rising the UK’s defence industrial base. Creating a transparent incentive for worldwide defence companions to spend money on the UK.

An incentive to observe international buyers like Tekever and Rheinmetall, whose new amenities in West Wales and Telford are a part of the £1.4 billion of Foreign Direct Investment into the UK defence sector since July 2024, which has created as much as 1,700 new jobs.

And to embed our new defence industrial revolution throughout our areas and nations, yesterday I unveiled an preliminary 5 Defence Growth Deals. Investing £250 million into 5 vibrant regional defence ecosystems to make them match for the longer term, outfitted to thrive within the quickly evolving world of twenty first century defence innovation.

Five Defence Growth Deals that may act as a magnet for funding, an incubator of expertise and a pipeline of alternative and employment throughout our nations and areas.

Bolstering our industrial base, assist of the UK Armed Forces and ship jobs as a part of the federal government’s Plan for Change.

We have already unveiled the primary two areas.

One is in Plymouth, house of the biggest naval base in Europe, the place we’re working with native authorities, faculties and companies to seal the town’s standing as a pioneering centre of maritime excellence in our new age of autonomy and AI.

And one in South Yorkshire in and across the Steel City that may safeguard that area’s conventional standing as a pioneering centre of excessive grade defence supplies and parts and to additional increase defence innovation and collaboration in each nook of the UK.

And so I’m happy to announce right here immediately that UK Defence Innovation will probably be unveiling the small print of our new regional defence and safety clusters.

An funding of round £1.5 million over the following two years to deliver our world main primes along with our progressive SMEs and startups, alongside teachers and native and devolved governments to resolve the army functionality challenges we face and monetise these options the place it’s in our safety curiosity to take action.

And to make sure our persons are outfitted with the abilities that they should each drive our new defence industrial revolution and thrive themselves inside it.

We are investing £182 million in defence expertise, included with the 5 new Defence Technical Excellence Colleges.

And as we’ve seen over time, from radar and the jet engine to encryption and the web, defence innovation additionally usually revolutionizes civilian life and finds a lot greater markets as a consequence.

So from the drones being developed in Plymouth to the semiconductors in South Wales, we’re specializing in applied sciences the place defence innovation can drive broader financial advantages.

Today, I’m happy to announce that DASA, our defence innovation accelerator, is unveiling the small print of that £1.5 million in new funding for UK innovators to develop new methods to handle bleeding that can’t be stopped by making use of direct strain. So we will save extra lives on the battlefield and on prime of that, many extra lives in the neighborhood and around the globe.

And to offer additional funding for twin improvements like this, the federal government will introduce new laws inside the scope of the National Wealth Fund to assist defence and safety, in addition to different high-growth potential sectors contained in our Modern Industrial Strategy.

Taken collectively, the defence spending commitments set out by the Prime Minister, the aptitude commitments set out in our Strategic Defence Review and the commitments to business set out in our new Defence Industrial Strategy make the UK one of the best place on the earth to start out and develop a defence enterprise.

A kingdom united behind its Armed Forces, the place the federal government can also be backing the UK-based companies and industries that stand behind them.

A rustic built-in with huge spending in NATO, AUKUS and our GCAP allies, a authorities listening to business and dealing with business.

Working collectively, we will do higher.

We can not ship these goals with out the assist of all of you and the energy of the partnership that we’ve got with business to ship the capabilities we have to defend our democracy and the issues that we stand for.

So we are going to slash pink tape. We will spend money on expertise. Fuel innovation at wartime velocity, in order that pressing operational necessities may be undertaken in regular instances. Grow exports and onshore defence jobs.

We are severe about defence and severe about turning defence into that engine for progress so that each area of the UK can profit from rising spending right here and throughout the globe.

So whether or not you’re a associate nation, a associate in business, an investor or a possible associate, we need to work with you to show UK defence into an industrial superpower by 2035.

In our more and more harmful world that’s a win for our safety, a win for our prosperity, a win for our values, and a win commercially.

So use DSEI 2025 to become involved and to maneuver ahead. Together, we will do that.

Thank you very a lot on your time.