Good morning everyone.

When people talk about, or write about, the Department for International Trade, they tend to do so in rather vague terms about what they call ‘trade deals’.

While trade policy is an important part of what we do, it accounts for less than 20% of our total staff.

As an international economic department we are responsible for helping sell UK goods and services to the rest of the world, negotiating market access for UK exporters, assisting outward direct investment for UK companies into overseas markets and for foreign direct investment into the UK.

So I am very grateful to the Institute for Government for providing this opportunity to set out how DIT came into existence, its current role and its future ambitions.

And I am proud to lead a department which has a direct and measurable impact on our prosperity.

In 2017/18 alone, we helped UK businesses export goods and services worth around £30.5 billion.

Using analysis by the Institute for Economic Affairs, it is estimated that this could potentially generate around £10 billion for the Exchequer.

Despite a challenging global economic climate, British exports now stand at a record high of £640 billion – that’s a year-on-year increase of 3%.

Since the Referendum alone, UK exporters have sold around £1.7 trillion of goods and services to the rest of the world.

What’s more, our efforts to keep the UK in the global spotlight as an attractive place to do business has helped stock levels of foreign direct investment hit another record-high of £1.34 trillion.

This has helped generate around 1,500 new jobs across the country each week.

Between 2016 and 2018 we supported more than 3,500 inward investment projects, creating and safeguarding over 170,000 jobs.

And the UK is the number one destination for foreign direct investment in Europe and third in the world last year behind only China and the United States.

It actually seems remarkable to me that three years ago DIT did not even exist.

When I was asked to set up the new department by the Prime Minister in 2016 we had nothing.

No desks, no phones, no IT, no office and no staff.

In fact, on day one I was 25% of the department!

Today we are a department of nearly 4,000 people, led by an excellent Permanent Secretary in Antonia Romeo and equally excellent Chief Trade Negotiation Adviser, Crawford Falconer.

The UK stands ready to implement an independent and visionary trade policy for the first time in more than 40 years.

It is truly a pivotal moment for the country, and I am delighted to say that we are starting from a position of strength.

I wanted this morning to take a step back, as Bronwen says.

How did we get to this point? Where did we start from? And what lessons does it have for the future?

When I became Defence Secretary in 2010 we were faced with reshaping a dysfunctional Ministry of Defence in real time – with £39 billion inherited departmental overspend, a 7% budget cut to be implemented to help reduce the government deficit, two military conflicts in Afghanistan and Libya, a strategic defence review that had not been conducted for 12 years and the loss of around 37% of our civil servants as a consequence of the above.

People

And this experience was crucial when it came to creating a new department.

While we needed to develop our policies, our strategy and direction, as well as building the very infrastructure from which everything else flows – and all in a very short space of time – we were free from the limitations of someone else’s structures and constraints.

We knew we had to be clear about our purpose from the outset.

We had to find a way to incorporate existing organisations like UK Export Finance, our export credit agency.

So we organised ourselves around three very distinct pillars: trade policy, including trade agreements; investment promotion; and export promotion.

And everyone in the department belongs to one of these. And each of the pillars is owned by a dedicated Minister, and a dedicated Civil Service Director General.

We also had to create an organisational plan to implement these three pillars, build HR and finance capabilities, find office space, and – crucially – find the very best people available to fill them.

Setting up a Departmental Board, including recruiting a team of Non-Executive Board Members led by the excellent Simon Walker, was crucial as it acts as the central coordinating structure of the entire department.

And the Board, which I chair, meets around 10 times a year.

We just held our 27th board on Monday.

It plays a fundamental role in challenging and scrutinizing the department’s business, while simultaneously setting our strategic direction and supporting my Ministerial team and senior Civil Servants in delivering our long-term goals.

We publish our agenda to our staff worldwide before the Board sits so they can comment and feed into it, and we inform them of our discussions and decisions afterwards both by email and by video.

But even with this in place, it was clear that we had a problem: the UK had not operated its own independent trade policy for more than 40 years and there were very few civil servants or Government Ministers with direct experience in this highly technical field, and no collective Whitehall memory on which to draw.

All of this could seem daunting, but I actually think that the uniqueness and genuinely ground-breaking nature of the challenges fuelled the excitement and expectation of what lay in store for the department.

But pulling together this team in such a short space of time required a great deal of cooperation across Government.

Now some might think that with more than 430,000 employees scattered across the country and internationally the Civil Service is unwieldy.

Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

At its best, few organisations are as dynamic and quick to react as the Civil Service.

So when the call went out for help in staffing DIT, other Government departments did all they could to release the people with the right skills.

And our team worked frantically over the summer so we could hit the ground running when Parliament returned from the summer break in 2016.

There is not a day goes by when I am not impressed by the dedication, drive and professionalism of those who have helped create DIT, and delivered world-class advice and delivered out objectives as the structures bedded in.

Learning

However, while we had some very experienced people from the outset, they did not necessarily come with the policy expertise that we required.

That’s why we made it an early priority to reach out to the people who already had the expertise that we needed, holding consultations with trade experts around the world.

We were able to draw on the skills and expertise from strategic partners such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand who advised us, for example, on establishing our own trade remedies function.

And there was a great deal to learn, with policy details like procurement, intellectual property, tariffs or rules of origin requiring a whole new level of understanding, or a different perspective in the context of an independent UK trade policy.

That’s why we unveiled the International Trade Profession last year.

This is the newest Civil Service profession and is designed to recruit and train a new generation of international trading talent.

More than 2,500 civil servants have joined so far and are being equipped with the skills they need to make our country the great trading nation that we can be.

Another challenge was the need for DIT to become a credible, data-driven, intelligence-led and more efficient organisation.

This meant developing our analytical, statistical and data science capabilities, and rolling out a new range of surveys and data collections to inform the development of trade and investment policy.

We laid the groundwork to build solid relationships with the ONS and HMRC to deliver the necessary trade statistics, and we pushed forward with the OECD and WTO cutting-edge initiatives developing new measurements of digital trade and Trade in Value Added.

I remember when we started commenting on the lack of data that seemed to be there and I remember saying that if I made decisions when I was still practising medicine on the basis of the same level of information I would probably have found myself up in front of the General Medical Council.

But we have built that capability and are continuing to build it today.

We made sure businesses were involved in helping shape the department from the outset by opening a channel of communication to understand what mattered to them, while at the same time opening the eyes of many companies to the potential of what was coming down the track.

And we expanded our World Trade Organisation mission in Geneva as a very early priority in fact within days, to lay the foundations for when we take up our seat as independent member.

Vision

So having got the right people in the right places, we needed to set a clear direction for the department.

So in my first major speech as Secretary of State I made the case in Manchester for free trade and an open and liberal trading environment and warned about the dangers of protectionism.

I said there that “free trade has, and will continue to, transform the world for the better, and the UK has a golden opportunity to forge a new role for ourselves and importantly for the rest of the world.”

I believe this passionately and setting out this intellectual creed from the start was essential in shaping DIT’s culture and its direction.

But in a department the size of DIT, with a presence in 108 countries, political direction by my excellent team of Ministers and myself can only go so far on a day-to-day basis.

So we wanted to create a set of values that went to the very heart of everything we do.

We called it the DIT Spirit.

Central to this is our “vision to create a UK that trades its way to prosperity, to stability and to security”.

Our values of being Expert, Enterprising, Engaged and Inclusive guide how we deliver our vision and what we expect of one another.

These values are in turn underpinned a raft of behaviours that we expect all staff to model.

By setting out our values so early and clearly, we have been able to build a culture of trust and purpose which, in less than three years, is I think established, coherent and cohesive.

This is reflected in our People Survey results, which have shown consistent improvement in the level of employee engagement across the department.

If, of course, there’s a downside, it’s when the Treasury tell me we’ve got a very high application to job ratio and therefore there’s no free-market case to see our salaries go up!

Senior leadership team

Now the efforts of our early senior leadership team to build capacity at pace were quite remarkable.

A single Departmental Plan needed to be built, publicly outlining our core strategic objectives, and how we were going to achieve them.

Trade and investment sector teams, spread across several organisations, had to be brought together: from UKTI, UK Export Finance, the Trade Directorate team at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and overseas teams from the FCO.

Other teams such as the Trade Policy Group needed to be scaled up very quickly. And teams that didn’t even exist, including our corporate functions such as the Ministerial Strategy Directorate, Private Offices, Finance, HR and Communications functions all needed to be built.

Future

Everyone involved in DIT has been in some way involved in something ground-breaking.

As the Institute for Government has said, the UK is unique in carrying responsibility for export promotion, export finance, trade remedies and international negotiations in a single department.

We also carry export licensing on top of that.

This sets us apart from so many of our strategic partners such as Australia, or Canada, the EU, or the United States.

Indeed, across the non-EU G20 countries only China and Indonesia have a separate trade department. Which puts us in a strong position.

We are an international economic department of state, which has brought together skillsets in trade promotion, trade policy, foreign direct investment, outward direct investment and export promotion in one place.

We also convened The Board of Trade for the first time in 150 years to champion exports, inward investment and outward direct investment, but most importantly to ensure that their benefits are spread across all parts of the United Kingdom.

We will be meeting tomorrow in Belfast and I’ve been fortunate enough to have senior individuals from across the political parties with experience, Patricia Hewitt, for example, former Secretary of State at DTI, is one of our members, Brian Willson also has joined us.

We have also established a network of Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioners who are responsible for our nine global regions.

They were selected from the very best talent, across both the public and private sector, for their expertise in specific markets from China to the US and everywhere in between.

Their job, alongside our Trade Policy Group and our partners across the world, is to secure the best market access, trade and international relationships that the UK will need as demand from growing markets in Asia and growing technology change over the next decade and more.

And our trade commissioners set priorities for wide geographical areas and promote the department’s work overseas, but they are responsible for their own regional trade plans, setting out our ambitions in those regions for exports, outward direct investment and foreign direct investment back to the UK.

Now, there were those, and probably still are those, who believe that such a level of autonomy given by a Secretary of State to our Trade Commissioners was, to use the words of Yes Minister, “a very brave decision, Minister”.

But I think our trust has been shown to be very well placed.

And I’ve always said there’s no point in having the most intelligent and most intuitive staff if you don’t allow them to use their intelligence and their intuition to be able to serve the organisation better.

As a department we’ve have continued to run the Exporting is GREAT campaign to raise awareness among UK businesses about how exporting can help firms to grow.

We have launched the online great.gov.uk platform which has, among other things, a live directory of exporting opportunities.

For the first time anywhere, a Government – this Government – is putting business directly in touch with potential customers overseas.

Some 149,300 exporting opportunities have been advertised since the service’s launch to UK businesses.

And we are continuing to support the excellent work of UK Export Finance, the world’s first credit agency which this year celebrates its 100th birthday.

Its ground-breaking and innovative work remains as relevant today as it did when it was first created, with some £50 billion worth of financing available in 65 international currencies.

Last year we launched the new Export Strategy to make Britain a 21st century exporting superpower.

Through this we are informing, connecting and financing businesses of all sizes in a bid to increase our exports from 30% to 35% of our GDP moving us towards the top of the G7.

One thing that struck me, however, is that not everyone understands the value of what we sell.

So, this morning’s check you’re awake quiz: if I were to ask you to rank the following sectors in order of their estimated export contribution to the UK economy, with the greatest at the top, what would you say?

So you have insurance and pensions, whisky, defence, and education. Where do you rank them from one to four?

Well, it may surprise you to learn that based on the latest figures education would come top with £19.9 billion.

Based on the latest ONS figures, the total export of insurance and pension services from was just behind at £18.8 billion.

The defence sector comes in at £5.9 billion in the same period.

And whisky exports, according to the ONS, were £5 billion last year.

Now, drawing comparisons is always a minefield and I want to make clear that while these are official figures, I’m not strictly comparing like with like.

But I think it gives us an idea of the huge diversity and strength of the UK’s exports – and not always in sectors that the public might readily think of as being exports for the UK.

We’ve also secured a deal with the WTO to remain within its Government Procurement Agreement, providing access to the £1.3 trillion a year’s worth of procurement opportunities in the global public tender market in a no deal scenario.

We have agreed a no deal tariff policy across Whitehall to minimise costs to business, mitigate price impacts on consumers, and support UK producers against unfair trade practices. In the event of a no deal exit, 87% of total imports to the UK by value will be eligible for tariff-free access.

We have also set up a Trade Remedies Investigations Directorate to ensure the UK can continue to provide support to domestic industries to counter unfair subsidies or dumping. And we have worked to ensure we have bilateral agreements in place to ensure continuity of trade with key markets currently covered by existing EU trade arrangements worth £71 billion, whether that is in the event of no deal, or probably more importantly after the proposed implementation period. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Conclusion

What we have achieved in three years is working for Britain and I would just like to say that I’m enormously proud and grateful to my team.

We are helping businesses access new markets, with new tools and new technologies to improve the living standards of people around the world, who are benefiting from greater choice at lower prices.

This in turn helps drive global prosperity, contributes to global stability and security, and underpins the Government’s agenda for a Global Britain.

We’re on the cusp of striking out with our own trade policy for the first time in more than four decades. When we do so we will have the freedom to shape a better future, not just for ourselves and our own people, but for the wider world too.

As I’ve often said, we don’t see trade as an end in itself; we see trade as a means to an end.

It is a way by which we can spread prosperity.

Spreading prosperity helps underpin social cohesion; social cohesion underpins political stability; and political stability is the building block of our collective security.

And it’s a continuum that cannot be interrupted without unwanted consequences. All we require is the courage to seize the opportunities that are out there and my department stands ready to help the country do just that.

Thank you.

Dr Edward Day has been appointed as the government’s Drug Recovery Champion to ensure the best treatment and support for those recovering from drug misuse.

Dr Day is a clinician and academic with expertise in this field and experience in dealing directly with those who are dependent on drugs.

He has helped to develop national clinical guidance on drug recovery and his appointment will help drive forward the aims of the government’s Drug Strategy and Serious Violence Strategy.

Working with ministers, Dr Day will agree an annual delivery plan for drug recovery which will set out his objectives and the key issues he will explore.

He will also support collaboration between partners such as local authorities, housing groups and criminal justice agencies at national and local levels, offering advice on best practice when it comes to treatment and recovery.

Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, said:

As well as preventing people from using drugs in the first place, it is vital we give those who are recovering from their addiction the support and treatment they need.

I’m grateful to Dr Day for bringing his expertise and experience to the role of Drug Recovery Champion. His work will make a real difference to the lives of those suffering the misery of drug dependency.

Dr Day will seek to address the stigma faced by people with drug or alcohol issues when it comes to finding work and securing housing. He will also act as a ministerial envoy, visiting communities, treatment providers and local recovery champions.

He will update the Drug Strategy Board on progress on the delivery plan, as well as recommendations for improvements in services that promote recovery. The board, chaired by the Home Secretary, meets twice a year to drive the implementation of the Drug Strategy. Members include secretaries of state and ministers from across government, and drug service experts.

Dr Day said:

I look forward to taking on this role with the aim of bringing together people with lived experience of recovery from drug problems and those with professional skills in this area to promote effective interventions and approaches.

Dr Day will carry out his role for three years alongside his positions as clinical reader in addiction psychiatry at the University of Birmingham and consultant psychiatrist at the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust.

In February, the Home Secretary appointed Professor Dame Carol Black to lead a major review that will examine the ways in which drugs are fuelling serious violence as well as the harms that drugs cause and the best ways to prevent drug-taking.

As the review will have a direct impact on the treatment and recovery system, Dr Day will play a key role in taking forward Dame Carol’s recommendations.

Notes to editors

Dame Carol has published a call for evidence on drug use, supply, harms and interventions as part of the information-gathering phase of her review and will report her initial findings to the Home Secretary this summer.

Find more details on the call for evidence.

Well, good morning.

I am delighted to be here. No, more than delighted to be here. I am honoured be here. Not just to be able to thank RUSI for all it does, but to thank you, and particularly those in uniform for your service.

And of course to deliver the Sir Henry Leach memorial lecture…

For all his considerable achievements, he is perhaps best known for his unwavering resolve. He told Margaret Thatcher not only that the Falklands Islands should be retaken, but that they must be retaken, and not everyone agreed with him, but he had confidence in the quality of his personnel. That under-resourced, as even they were then, professionalism and belief in our cause would carry the day, and he wasn’t wrong.

Maybe if it hadn’t been Henry Leach, we would be a different nation today. Some people think we are. They’re wrong. We still have the right stuff in the Royal Navy and for that matter the British Army and yes, even the Royal Air Force.

For him, and for his Prime Minister, in deciding that course of action, the principles were clear. Their confidence and resolve created a focus and an effort to assemble that famous task force and get the job done.

Those two great leaders – military and political – provided reassurance in those troubled times.

Political turmoil at home, a resurgent left wing, calls on other parts of the Exchequer, a distracted America, sound familiar?

In troubled times, we search for those great personal qualities in others to lead our nation and reconnect with the ambitions the people of this country feel so strongly and so intuitively.

Leach and his prime minister articulated a national mission hard-wired into the souls of their nation and the people.

How were they able to do that? To swell hearts? To focus minds?

To define what it is to be a patriot?

Did they use the power of their personal philosophy to mould our great institutions?

Actually it was the opposite.

They felt the values of the institutions of our nation so strongly, that their personalities were shaped by them.

They became the living embodiment of their nation’s enduring values and they were a beacon of freedom to those under tyranny.

And they inspired courage in others.

They were moved by tolerance, respect, plurality of thought, justice, compassion and above all, a love of freedom. They clearly saw what Thatcher called: “the primacy of the heart” and they accepted no “makeshifts” as Sir Henry would have put it.

All of us can understand this because all of us – especially those in public service – have been shaped by those values. Why else would we wish to serve? And when I look round this room on this Spring morning, I wonder what your stories are?

What has this great nation stamped on your hearts?

Why do you find yourselves here?

Why is it that we serve?

Personally, I can still recall the sight of HMS Hermes leading that task force out of Portsmouth Harbour.

And as a nine-year-old, I didn’t know much about that scene. But witnessing it, and Thatcher’s resolve, and Leach’s confidence, well I knew Britain stood up to bullies.

…and I knew it was important that we did.

It was important enough for some of those ships and my class mates’ fathers not to return.

I’d encountered courage, I’d seen duty, and I’d seen sacrifice for something greater than ourselves.

And 37 years later, when I was asked by Major General Julian Thompson to address the San Carlos dinner, the reunion of that task force, well I saw it again.

And I can tell you the veterans remain to this day as uncompromising in their approach to the enemy as they towards their food and drink…

I’m going to talk to you today, and in the future about, ships, boats, cyber and all sorts of other things.

I want you to know however, from the outset, that I understand the business we’re in is primarily about people, it’s about heart and guts, it’s about imagination and belief, vision and ambition.

And our country, at such a profound cross roads in its story, facing such uncertainty and yes opportunity, needs the values Leach admired like never before.

Freedom, democracy, rule of law and the rules-based order…

Our citizens want the nation to be able to affect and improve the world.

They want us to go out and sort out problems.

And I know from my previous department, their generosity and their care for others around the world.

They hate that feeling of impotence when we can’t protect people.

And they want us to be able to further our national interests.

And this means they want us to remain a nation with the inclination and the ability to act.

They want us to influence, to deter and to intervene. And they want us to be able to do this even when that means us standing alone.

Britons intuitively understand Global Britain and you do too because you’re at its heart. You are the foundation of global Britain.

You’re the ones with the reach, the connections, the platforms, the security and partnerships.

Without you, we cannot protect shipping. Without this, trade deals won’t yield dividends.

Without you to guard peace and security, nations can’t lift themselves out of poverty.

Without you to combat threats…whatever their shape and size… evil will prevail.

Global Britain is a protector, it’s a wealth bringer, it’s a problem solver, a life saver and a peace broker. And nothing symbolises our intent and ambition for global Britain and has captured the hearts of our citizens more than our new carriers.

They are a mighty symbol of our intent.

The most powerful ships Britain has ever built.

Nine acres of sovereign territory that will give us the ability to project power from anywhere in the world.

Whether as part of a discrete operation, in support of land operations or as part of a coalition of allies and partners. They are versatile and they are a global influence.

In 2010, when I made the case for the carriers, I just pointed to every humanitarian crisis and brewing conflict situation we had ever experienced since we’d had carriers.

And I challenged people to name one situation in which that capability had not been instrumental in getting a good outcome.

Sir Henry had only two mini-carriers in his day and I’m sure he is looking down on us with envy.

Last year our mighty Queen Elizabeth tested out the F35b aircraft at WESTLANT.

This year it will be returning to the Eastern seaboard to conduct flight trials with our own F35b future fighter.

And when Prince of Wales joins her in the fleet in the near future…we will have one carrier available at very high readiness at all times…

And this will match our strategic nuclear deterrent with a conventional one.

I want to make sure that we make the most of this incredible sovereign capability.

And that’s why today I can announce that we will develop a new policy that will set out how those ships will deliver for our nation in the years ahead.

The national carrier policy will lay the blueprint for how we use them to deliver global Britain’s objectives around the world.

Our carriers are setting the tone for the future Navy that I want to see and they’re instilling confidence, closing deals and protecting the rules-based order.

And projecting our intent in uncertain and a challenging world.

…a world that is becoming increasingly complex

… the challenge of China rising

…the threat from a Russia resurgent

…the ever-changing shape of violent extremism and terrorism

….the growth of cyber threats…and organised crime

The grey areas of new weapons and new theatres.

There are huge challenges ahead of us, and there will be many demands made of us.

So, we had better be prepared.

Like Sir Henry, when he gate crashed that emergency cabinet and Thatcher asked him what she could do for him.

He replied ‘No, Prime Minister, it’s what I can do for you’,

So, what are we doing to stay ready?

In the past 12 months we’ve been… training in Norway’s Arctic tundra

Drug busting in the Arabian Gulf…establishing field hospitals in the South Sudan

Helping enforce UN sanctions in South Pacific

And escorting Russian vessels off the premises

And, silent and undetected you’re maintaining our continuous-at-sea deterrent/

In all that you do you carry the reputation of Great Britain with you

…because you influence and you shape the world around you

…you’re the prototype that other seeks to emulate

…and partner of choice for our allies

And I’m proud that you’re strengthening partnerships around the world at all times…

With HMS Defender supporting NATO while on Exercise Formidable Shield.

With HMS Montrose and our Mine Countermeasures Force now permanently in the Middle East and a Naval Support Facility in Bahrain – keeping vital shipping lanes open

With our Royal Navy soon to sail to the Baltic as part of the Joint Expeditionary Force – reinforcing partnerships with like-minded northern European allies

And with our development of the North Atlantic Joint Operating Area…that will soon guard mile after mile of vital waterway.

Our people are not just exceptionally brave but also enormously innovative and creative. Today they’re doing everything

…from devising new environmentally-friendly ways to power headquarters in the field

…to delivering AI and robotics into every fighting arm

…courtesy of our new pioneering new Naval X accelerator

And at the very pinnacle of the pyramid you’ll find the Royal Marines

…developing Future Commando Force

In a reimagined global Britain, Defence will continue to be the first duty of the nation

But it must up to our ambition:

…maintaining a ruthless focus on its mission

…becoming more forward deployed

…and going out of its way to work with friends and allies

But if our future fleet is to respond to the growing demands, we need to do much more:

Investment will remain critical

We have done a great deal to drive out inefficiencies in defence

But there is more for us to do.

And today you will hearing about the direction and innovation in the RN, about our new capabilities coming online and being planned.

But I think we need to get some fundamentals right too if we are going to match the Navy and the nation’s ambition.

In 2015 we rightly committed to meet NATO commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence. Understandably people focus on that number. Politicians point to it. And rightly encourage other nations to match it.

But that’s not the whole story.

I just want us to briefly recap the headlines from the last three defence reviews. In 1997, the review pledged to deliver 32 destroyers and frigates and 2 Amphibious Assault Ships. In the event, we got the 2 Assault ship…but only six frigates and destroyers.

In 2010 SDSR, we said we would deliver 2 carriers and 19 destroyers and frigates …of which 6 were Type 45s and 13 were Type 26s. Well we got the carriers. But the 13 Type 26s were reduced to 8 and we’ve ordered 3 of them.

And in SDSR 2015 we set out a shopping list of 8 T26s, 5 Type 31e, 2 OPVs and 4 ballistic missile submarines. I am determined that remains on track.

I ask you, what is the point of methodically reviewing threats and tasks, formulating capability and then not delivering it?

What’s the point of building ships only to mothball them for lack of crew, spares or funds?

What is the point of costly design and innovation if we only intend to build a handful?

What is the point of running on old vessels and delaying new ones and running up massive costs in the process?

If the RN and wider defence is to deliver on the ambitions of our country, then we must tackle both the funding and the political behaviours which constantly undermine it.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to be saying more about how we build on all the good work and lessons to date, most notably from the carrier alliance.

To how we ensure Defence sits at the heart of the prosperity agenda.

To end the vicious circle of unfulfilled SDSRs and more of the same.

To create a virtuous circle where we recognise that it’s long order books and a steady drumbeat in our yards that strengthens our supply chain and brings down the overall cost of procurement. What’s needed is a closer partnership with industry that gives them confidence to invest and build and us the confidence that we can and must buy British.

We must recognise that if Britain’s armed forces don’t use it, Britain’s businesses will find it harder to sell it. We have to walk the walk, as well as talk the talk.

And we must do more to maximise the full value of our resources to build up Britain…not only is that necessary in terms of creating skills and resilience.

But it’s vital in creating an environment where Defence gets the critical investment it needs.

Now as I stand before you today, I can’t tell you that The Treasury is going to welcome that message. I cannot tell you that The Treasury will agree with all of my message.

What I can promise you though, is that The Treasury will hear this message.

We know that Defence must play a much greater role in the whole of government’s prosperity agenda.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR INDUSTRY

What does all this mean for industry? It means we’re looking to you to match our ambition. To get the ships we need, we need the shipbuilding. That means improving the relationship between industry and Government

A few years ago, Sir John Parker’s report laid bare the challenges. The old days of changing requirements on a whim and being vague about what we need in the long-term, that must end our Recent Acquisition Review. Took a sample of live MOD programmes.

It found on average that the initial estimated cost of a project rose by 35 per cent and delivery time by 46 per cent. That’s not just costing us time and money…that is damaging our operational effectiveness.

So my challenge to industry is to become more sustainable. To do more to deliver value for money. To stick to fixed project budgets and to innovate in the way you build. To up your competitiveness…building exportability in as standard and to deliver faster…the days of taking decades to build a ship are over.

I know you’ve been told this before, but what’s different now is that both you and I recognise that the politics also needs to change.

And we have to continually learn.

Which is why I’ve commissioned work examining the lessons from the Mars tanker procurement, especially for our UK supply chain.

Britain already has incredible shipbuilding heritage but I think we should prepare for a fantastic future, too.

Aircraft Carrier Alliance showed that Britain has what it takes to produce first class fifth generation ships.

Just as the lessons of Type 26 is that we have the capability to design frigates that are the envy of the world.

We need to learn these lessons as we bring in our next generation of Fleet Solid Support Ships…our logistic backbone. So it’s time for a sea change in industry as well. Let’s replace Sir John’s old vicious cycle with a virtuous circle.

And let’s remember Sir Henry’s favourite words:

The sea endures no makeshifts. Discipline, courage and contempt for all that is pretentious and insincere. These are the teaching of the ocean and the elements – and they have been the qualities in all age of the British sailor.

As we prepare the next chapter for the fleet…

As we go into the next CSR.

As we transform defence

Let’s have some honesty about what it takes.

Let’s have some honesty about what it costs.

Let’s have some confidence about its value and some rigor in the planning.

Let’s have some excellence in our partnership and some clarity in our mission.

As your Secretary of State all I ask is for your help in that task.

Adam Varey of Woodyard Lane, Foston, Derby was successfully prosecuted by the Environment Agency