Luke Pollard MP speech to Sea Power Conference
Source: gov.uk (2025-12-08)

Luke Pollard MP, Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, gave a speech at the Sea Power Conference.

Welcome to the first Sea Lord Sea Power Conference. Thank you, Victoria, for everything that you do. If you’ve heard me speak before, I’m a big fan of the Council on Geo strategy. I like the way they shake up being a defence think tank, and that is very appropriate for what the Royal Navy is seeking to do with the military strategy here and thank you to John and BT for hosting us.

The importance of defence communications is quite apparent in the media and in all the intelligence reports by looking around the room that most of you read on a daily basis. And so thank you for, thank you for that. And you will have heard in the media this morning elements of what the First Sea Lord is going to say. So please do act surprised at the appropriate moment. If you’ve been listening to the Today Programme this morning so you can see it.

But this is undoubtedly a really critical time for our national security, for the defence of the UK, and it is really important that we use this moment to refresh and to transform our defences so they can deter and, if necessary, defeat any aggressor and the Royal Navy is proud to be underpinning our security and our economy.

Now I know the move from the traditional domains of Lancaster House and its Victorian backdrop to one that is modern was not accidental. It was deliberate, to transform and change the mindset about how we talked about the Royal Navy.

Not just as the modern Navy for many of our allies around the world, the heritage, the tradition, but also a focus now on the cutting-edge transformation that the Royal Navy is leading amongst our NATO allies. And it’s also a reminder that our £2.8 trillion economy, anchored here in the city, which relies on instant communications, free flowing data, just in time supply chains, is overwhelmingly dependent on our maritime security, reminding us all that our Royal Navy is still on the very frontline of our national security, our economic security, and especially, keeping us safe more than 475 years after it was formed, guarding the critical gateway to the Euro Atlantic.

Now some of you have heard me say before I’m very proud to be a Navy brat. Very proud to be the son of a Royal Navy submariner, very proud to be an MP for a naval city in Plymouth. Because of those reasons, it is even more important that as a Minister, I lend my support to the necessary transformation that the Royal Navy needs and is leading. Now earlier this year, I had the honour of addressing the latest cohort of Royal Navy officers passing out from Dartmouth. It’s the same parade ground that my old man passed out on 51 years ago, and unfortunately, you can still see a photo of the passing out parade and the things, I was looking for him, couldn’t see him, fortunately could see me, so the DNA was strong I’m afraid - apologies on that one there.

But there was a sense of pride for everyone who’s watching their family pass out on that day. A sense of pride in the service, a sense of anticipation, what might come but also trepidation as to what world are their pride and joy are passing out into - what is the security environment? And I want to use this moment to partly say thank you to those people who serve. It was a privilege to join the ships company of HMS Richmond on her return to Devonport last week, having completed the Carrier Strike Group deployment with our carrier Prince of Wales. It was a hugely successful deployment that underline the importance of the Royal Navy’s ability to deploy beyond the horizon. But also our interoperability with our allies and increasingly our move from interoperability to interchangeability with our allies, a significant step.

Now over recent months, we’ve seen the Royal Navy strengthen our alliances in the Indo Pacific delivering aid to hurricane-struck communities in the Caribbean and protecting our critical underwater infrastructure at home. Three very different, but crucially important examples of how the Royal Navy saves lives and protects our way of life.

Now, over the last five decades since the old man passed out, the support for defence from British governments has oscillated. After the Cold War, successive governments rushed to embrace the perceived peace difference, and who could blame them at the time? But as the threat from Russia over the last two decades has risen and has grown in plain sight, it is fair to say that governments have moved too slowly. Through Litvinenko and the Salisbury poisonings to Georgia, Crimea and the full-scale invasion of our friends in Ukraine. Today, with the war in Europe fast approaching its fourth anniversary with grey zone attacks on our mainland and increased Russian probing of our coastal waters, those cuts to defence have been exposed as short sighted. And in the 18 months that we’ve been in government, it’s been our mission to reverse that trend and to rebuild our armed forces and our industrial base here for a new era of threat and hard power and to deliver that mission, I’m glad that the Chancellor has given us an extra £5 billion in our budget this year. We’re committed to 2.5% of defence spending by 2027 and ambition to hit 3% in the next Parliament and 3.5% on defence by 2030 alongside our NATO allies.

Now, we published our Strategic Defence Review in June and normally when I’m making a speech, I’m making an impassioned plea that it’s a good document to read. But if you’re here, you’ve probably read it already, so you don’t need to do that. But it is genuinely a good government document, well worth a read. But it is a document that does not pull its punches. It sets out a new era of threat that we are facing not just as the UK, but as an alliance. But it also sets out very clearly our intent and our requirement to be a NATO first country, to have a NATO first defence policy, with stronger alliances and greater deterrence and plots the transition to warfighting readiness that our more dangerous age demands. And in September, we published our Defence and Industrial Strategy to drive innovation, strengthen our defence industrial base and make defence an engine for growth that benefits communities across every nation and region of the UK.

Now, they are strategies that have materially strengthened NATO, because they strengthen the UK’s contribution to NATO, and as we saw in Naples last month, when our Carrier Strike Group reached full operating capability under NATO command, in the ultimate demonstration of interoperability and allied deterrents and they are strategies that remould the relationship between the government and our defence industrial sector. We need to overhaul our procurement, cutting contracting times, speeding up the ability to spiral develop, increasing support for SME’s and exporters and turbocharging innovation, charting a new course towards a hybrid Royal Navy and a thriving maritime industrial sector backed by £6.9 billion invested in our surface and submarine fleets and billions more in our continuous at sea, nuclear deterrent, feeding an always on ship building pipeline that directly employs 36,000 UK skilled workers.

Alongside increased investments in maritime innovation, autonomy and a hybrid airway, strengthening our world leading commando force enhancing deterrence and enhancing our ability to fight and win and win alongside our allies. And today, rather than reheat those plans in great detail or stealing first sandwiches for his speech that follows, I want to demonstrate how the investments we’ve made and the stronger demand signals we’ve given are already building a more capable Navy and really reinvigorating many of our coastal communities.

Now, when the Defence Secretary unveiled new partnerships with 20 companies this morning, he selected a group of people to help with the innovative technologies for the groundbreaking Atlantic Bastion programme. That will be spoken about more in a moment. But Atlantic Bastion is an important step towards a hybrid Royal Navy, where AI powered shield of sensors, autonomous vessels and traditional naval and air assets come together as a hybrid Navy protecting the North Atlantic from surface and subsurface threats, a layered network of tripwires and firepower of human expertise and machine intelligence, defending the undersea lifelines of our economy. And that’s why today we’ve unveiled 20 phase one contracts with 20 companies from primes to SME’s, to tech firms worth a total of £4 million. That will lead to a £35 million investment in the most promising innovations within 12 months to make Atlantic Bastion the new high tech hard power guardian of RC. In its entirety, the programme is expected to secure between 3,000 and 6,000 jobs in the UK and it will position the UK at the forefront of a tech revolution as we transition to hybrid naval power in a sector worth £350 billion globally.

Now, I’m proud to be a jammer and for our international visitors that have not spent time in Plymouth, that is someone proud to be from the city of Plymouth. But we’re already seeing how those policies can have an impact on communities like mine. Those naval cities that for many years have been the engine powering our Royal Navy and keeping it at sea.

The difference is in the jobs that are being created. The government used our new Defence Industrial Strategy to build on our city status as a centre of excellence for marine autonomy by designating it one of the five defence growth zones. These growth zones also in South Yorkshire, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, galvanised a joined-up approach to economic regeneration across government, across the private sector and across each area. Each growth zone has access to our £250 million funding pots to invest in skills, innovation and infrastructure, creating a magnet for further private investment.

Government investment should crowd in private sector investment in these locations and that’s what we’re already seeing and early this month, the Defence Secretary visited Helsing’s new Autonomous Marine drone factory in Plymouth to see that virtual circle being delivered for the Southwest and our Navy. Helsing is one of the successful Atlantic Bastion applicants and their factory is part of their £350 million investment that’s come out of this government’s growing defence partnership with Germany. It’s also the latest edition, the defence’s booming defence ecosystem, bringing initial 50 jobs to the region, with many more to follow. And we can see the impact to our investments and clearer demand signals across the UK coastline.

Last week I was on the other side of the county of Devon, and for those people that have ever tried travelling from Plymouth to North Devon you know that is quite a journey, to see the steel cutting on our brand new solid support ship, RFA Resurgence - the first new ship for the RFA being built in the British yard for many, many years. That contract supports 2 new skills pipelines with local colleges, 170 apprenticeships and growing 300 jobs in the Appledore Shipyard, 800 more to supply chain and 900 jobs in Harland and Wolff’s Belfast shipyard, where the ships will be put together. That’s the first time a government ordered ship will be built under the city’s iconic yellow crane for 22 years, a substantial milestone for that community in Northern Ireland. And as you cross back over the Irish Sea to Cumbria, you’ll see how the £200 million we’re investing through the Barrow Transformation Fund is shoring up the industrial foundations of our astute and dreadnought submarine programmes and our support for CASD.

Head north from Barrow to the Clyde and you’ll see more upgraded facilities, more opportunities for people to have good well-paid jobs as we build the Type 26 frigates, not just for the Royal Navy but for our friends in Norway as well, coming together that £10 billion deal being not just interoperable but interchangeable, the UK at the heart of our NATO alliance. Now that is the biggest UK export warship deal, which secures a further 2,000 jobs across the UK supply chain and strengthens interoperability, with a key ally in the North Atlantic.

And it’s not just our coastal communities that are benefiting from our transition to be a hybrid Navy. Last month I visited the MBDA factory in Stevenage following our negotiation and securing a £316 million contract to deliver the DragonFire directed energy weapon to the Royal Navy, with the first installation on a Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer by 2027, equipping our destroyers with an innovative new directed energy laser, proving capable of destroying high speed drones - and just for £10 per shot, changing the economic dynamics about how we protect our assets. That contract supports more than 550 skilled jobs in Edinburgh and Cambridge, Bolton and Bedford, Portsmouth and Farnborough, a national effort to make the Royal Navy more capable and our nation more prosperous.

Now, today, right around the UK, thanks to this government’s commitment to the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War and our backed British approach, we can see defence delivering for our Royal Navy, for our security and as an engine for growth and opportunity. But there’s more that we want do. The Royal Navy’s strengths now come not just from the strength of the Royal Navy alone, but the strength of our partnerships with our allies, increasingly, building on that lasting partnership that we have with the United States, but with our allies, especially in Northern Europe, in the JEF Alliance and our friends in Norway and across Europe, there’s more opportunities to do more together. And that is an opportunity that I hope participants in this conference will be seizing as the day goes by, to look at how we can work together more efficiently, more productively, more successfully, to increase our warfighting readiness, to share the innovations and technological advancements that we are all developing and to make sure that our deterrent capability is clear. So if there’s anyone in the Kremlin who thinks about having a go at NATO, they will be able to see that the combined power of NATO countries is now stronger than it has ever been, with a renewed determination to protect all of NATO.

That is a message that is important for the Kremlin to hear, but it’s also important that our own people and our own populations hear that increasing defence spending is an engine for growth, delivers domestic advantages and opportunities as well. And that’s why since the general election we’ve signed over 1,000 major defence contracts, of which 86% have been signed with British based businesses. We’ve generated over £1.7 billion in foreign direct investment into defence and whether that’s public or private sector investments in our existing capabilities or new innovations, the move to a hybrid Navy is clear. A hybrid Navy that is war fighting ready. That’s what the Strategic Defence Review sets out. That’s the job that the First Sea Lord has been delivering in his role, and that’s the job that all of us collectively can support.

Those public and private investments will remould our Royal Navy for a new age of threats and hard power, reinvigorate our defence industrial heartlands, and underpin the economic activity going on across every city, every community in our country, right across the UK, for generations to come and welcome the collaboration and the opportunity to bring folks together here.