§ Lord Astor of Heverasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will take steps to identify the key technologies required to sustain the manufacture of defence equipment; and whether they will publish this information for public discussion. [HL7]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach)The Government's Defence Industrial Policy, published in October 2002, seeks to provide the Armed Forces with the equipment that they require at best value for money for the taxpayer while sustaining a healthy and globally competitive defence industry. Our policy recognises that among the range of factors to be considered in acquisition decisions are the industrial capabilities that it might be desirable to retain in the UK industrial base. We are developing a defence industrial strategy to identify more explicitly the technical capabilities that are likely to be needed to meet defence needs into the future and to assess the importance of sustaining them in the UK for national security, technology or wider economic reasons. We expect to make the conclusions of this work available when it is complete in the second half of next year.