The latest annual Finance and Economics Statistical Bulletin on Trade, Industry and Contracts from the Ministry of Defence details the contracts placed and the payments made to its suppliers during the 2017/18 financial year.

The report shows that the MoD paid £24.6 billion to UK- and foreign-owned organisations, 42% of which was spent with its top 10 suppliers: BAE Systems, Babcock, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Lockheed Martin, Leonardo, QinetiQ, DXC, General Dynamics and Thales.

The largest spend on any single project was £8 billion — on the F-35 Lightning II programme.

Of specific interest to many members of NDI — the EEF organisation that helps the UK defence, aerospace, space and security sectors to compete globally — is the removal of data pertaining to spend with SMEs, apparently removed for 2018 due to ‘data quality issues’.

NDI continues to call on the MoD to publish “robust reporting” against its target of spending 25% of its budget with SMEs (both direct and indirect) by 2020.