§ Mr. Amessasked the Secretary of State for Defence what amount and what proportion of the defence budget is spent on wholly non-British products in the (a) Army, (b) Royal Navy and (c) Royal Air Force; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. PattieIn recent years about 5 per cent. of Ministry of Defence equipment expenditure has been on contracts placed overseas. In 1981–82, the last year for which figures are available, the total was about £250 million, excluding self-balancing expenditure on collaborative projects. It would not be possible to obtain the proportions of this expenditure attributable to the three services without disproportionate effort. Our policies on choosing the sources for the procurement of defence equipment were set out in my reply to the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young).—[Vol. 50, c.28.]
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§ Mr. Amessasked the Secretary for Defence what steps he takes to procure British replacements for foreign parts in Royal Air Force aeroplanes.
§ Mr. PattieForeign-manufactured equipments and parts are to be found on RAF aircraft in accordance with the Department's policy of direct procurement from abroad only when there are sufficient advantages in terms of cost, performance or time scale, or as a result of decisions by our United Kingdom main contractors, which are encouraged to adopt a policy similar to that of the Department. Should an item need to be replaced for operational or engineering reasons, this same policy, which was set out in my reply to the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Mr. Young)—[Vol. 50, c.28]—would be applied, and it is always open to British industry to compete for business currently placed overseas.