Exporting security to enhance defence

CTB: Building on the information you have given us about companies in the UK, how good is the UK brand in this sector and is the government working across departments in this sector?

SP: OK, so second part first – ’is the government working across departments in this sector?’– the answer is increasingly so. It’s always difficult in any government structure to get all of the government joined up at one point. However, we have made great progress in doing that now and when I look at what we’ve been doing in terms of some of these major overseas projects you see a really good team effort by HMG nowadays, which a couple of years ago was much harder to establish.

I think with the Prime Minister’s push on prosperity it’s on everyone’s agenda to do this, and so there is a lot more willingness and assistance to support these programmes overseas. So, my point about the government is, yes it is a lot more joined up now than it was and the leadership from the top is very much about the prosperity agenda, which I think is a really good thing for the UK.

In terms of brand, we have strong brands individually, certainly in security. For example, the police brand in the UK is a very very strong brand and counter terrorism is a very strong brand. We’ve got the most advanced and comprehensive counter terrorism strategy in the world in this country which is ’Contest’ and that’s borne out of decades of dealing with our own domestic terrorism threats.

So people look at us as a country with a lot of experience of dealing with these things and look at us not just in terms of equipment and capability but also in terms of strategy and how we deal with it and how we put public policy together and those sorts of things because, again, we are quite advanced in our thinking there, certainly one of the most advanced countries in the world.

So, in terms of Contest, policing and all sorts of other areas of government activity, we have very very strong brands and we continue to train lots of senior overseas security specialists in the UK as well, which helps to maintain our relationships going forward.

And as you know, our agencies are world class and known everywhere and all of that gives the UK a very strong advantage when it comes to working with other governments and providing security and cyber protection for whatever infrastructure they need to protect.
 
CTB: Looking towards the future, what are your industrial aspirations for this sector and is there opportunity for joint ventures and industrial partnerships within this sector?

SP: In short, yes there is. As I said, increasingly we are seeing consortiums, in some cases parts of them are joint ventures. In the infrastructure market a lot of the activity is really all about joint ventures and that industry sector is quite used to using joint ventures as a vehicle for security, as not everyone has got the whole answer, you need to partner up with people.

I think it takes a combination of joint ventures and consortiums to address large requirements overseas, be it border protections programmes, large airport builds where they need a complete solution, or the protection of critical infrastructure in that country, its about providing a comprehensive solution.

I think the days are rapidly disappearing where people just want to buy individual bits of a system; nowadays people want a comprehensive, complete system and the way we do that is by industry in the UK forming consortiums, so that is a trend going forward no doubt about that.

In terms of industrial aspirations, the security sector in this country continues to invest and continues to be, in many respects, the world innovator in terms of security solutions. We may not be the cheapest at producing a CCTV camera, but we are certainly the most innovative country when it comes to protecting passengers getting on to planes at airports, for example. So we are very good at innovation, and that continues to be our strong suit.

What we try to do is encourage the industry to continue to innovate, encourage the industry to form consortiums to take advantage of opportunities and to leverage the brands we’ve got. If we can keep that momentum going we will continue to see double digit growth in our security exports.

CTB: There is quite a common theme emerging of integration and the understanding that cyber security can’t be considered a separate entity anymore, with the UK being at its strongest and most innovative when offering these integrated packages. Am I correct in saying that?

SP: That’s right and that’s where we are in terms of international exports. It does depend on how you think about the cyber market – in fact in many ways using the term ‘cyber’ is a bit misleading, because it covers a multitude of things. I’m talking about the high end infrastructure projects, but of course you’ve got other sectors in the cyber market.

This ranges from the anti-virus that sits on your PC at home through to the financial services sector, which has for years now been out in front in terms of cyber protection, making sure your chip and pin cards are encrypted safely and that your banking details are secure, and a lot of that kind of capability comes from UK companies.

So its not just top end, there are other areas that we are strong in, but what really interests me is the ability to join together what we’re doing in the normal traditional security sense with what we’re doing with cyber security and providing a complete solution to any requests from overseas. That is really a good strength of the UK.