00:00Well, Ben Farrell is Global CEO of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply and also a former British Army
00:07Colonel.
00:07Ben, great to have you on the show. So the issue of funding hung really heavy over the NATO summit.
00:12How much of a hingeance is this?
00:16Yeah, clearly it is very much in the forefront of everybody's minds in today's conference.
00:22But it was clear that when the Secretary General spoke this morning, he was keen to keen to stress the
00:28progress and the commitment that we're seeing in a lot of nations really beginning to step up.
00:33You know, and I've seen firsthand I've been to many of the European capitals and it's quite right to highlight
00:39those who are not, you know, at the moment, obviously meeting their obligations.
00:44But many nations clearly are and have the intention to step up and commit to the growth in defence expenditure.
00:54I can see from the defence procurement community around Europe how more and more nations are leaning into this and
01:02going to, you know, certainly express the intention of increasing their GDP expenditure on defence as the evident threat from
01:10Russia is clear in everybody's mind.
01:12Well, Ben, I also want to talk about the UK. The UK's outgoing Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, arrived with no
01:18long term plan, apparently.
01:20Do you think that he is on a collision course with President Trump again?
01:25Well, it's a very good question. Clearly, the defence investment plan that was long awaited in the United Kingdom was
01:33indeed published recently.
01:35And there were one or two areas where people are questioning the affordability of some of it and where the
01:40money was coming from.
01:41So there has been a published plan, to be fair. And there have been certainly the intention expressed within the
01:49Ministry of Defence to meet these levels of spending commitment.
01:53So to some extent, he's taken a deliberate step in that direction, perhaps before leaving office.
01:58And that may well be an articulation of the intention longer term and to avoid the confrontation potentially with President
02:07Trump.
02:08I think, to some extent, I'm not sure the concentration of the summit is really going to be beyond that.
02:14But the United Kingdom has made a clear commitment to be at 3.5 percent of GDP by 2028, increasing
02:20to 5 percent.
02:21So I think, you know, that's a clear commitment. The question is now, is the delivery of that commitment.
02:25And apart from the defence deal, Iran, the wider Middle East conflicts and the Ukraine-Russia war apparently are expected
02:32to be discussed.
02:33But the issues are more than just about defence issues now, aren't they?
02:37We have just seen how much conflicts affect supply chains holding the rest of the world's ransom apparently now.
02:44No, it is. And we've recently done a survey and the level of anxiety amongst, you know, supply chain professionals
02:50around the world is a sort of high water market.
02:52It's receded slightly in the last few months. But, you know, what's happened and we can see this has happened
02:56is, to some extent, you know, the supply chains have been weaponised.
03:00The ability to constrain supply through the Strait of Hormuz were new phenomena.
03:04I was recently in the ASEAN region and for the very first time, I'm not saying it is an imminent
03:09threat, but people were talking about the Strait of Malacca, 24 billion, a million barrels of oil going through there
03:15on a daily basis.
03:16And the first time ever people have recognised, you know, the way that global trade flows is in itself a
03:22vulnerability.
03:23And the prospect of that being increasingly constrained and weaponised is a reality of the world we live in today.
03:28So supply chains are increasingly at the vanguard, the forefront of the conversation about national security and resilience.
03:37And your recent survey, you mentioned that just now, saw a very small drop in anxiety from procurement leaders, but
03:44it's still very high, isn't it?
03:46It is. It really is. And that has been growing and growing over the last few years.
03:51And we're not just talking about the obvious recent impact of the war in Iran, we're talking about a compound
03:57effect over a number of years,
04:00whether it was through originally the war in Ukraine and then the tariffs changed.
04:05So progressively, I think the reality of where we are in global supply has been ever more recognised and the
04:13vulnerability of that.
04:14So four decades of globalisation have taken us to a place where cost was the preeminent driver of supply chains.
04:21And increasingly, people are thinking now about the vulnerability or the lack of resilience in some of these supply chains.
04:26So this is why increasing supply chain professionals are being looked to in organisations to provide the answer, to provide
04:32continuity of supply.
04:34And increasingly, they're anxious about the ability to do that with the level of disruption, you know, we've seen in
04:40recent months.
04:40Thank you very much, Ben, for your insight. Thank you.
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