Defence: Procurement
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the answer given on 8 June 2026 to Question 6003, what criteria his Department uses in procurement to determine whether suppliers are high-risk.
Answered by Luke Pollard
The Department does not use a single fixed definition of a “high risk supplier”. Instead, suppliers are assessed case by case against factors including financial fragility, exposure to high-risk geographies, criticality to defence capability, supply chain dependencies, security risks, and their ability to demonstrate resilient sourcing and mitigation.
The Department also routinely monitors a list of critical suppliers to identify and manage risks to defence outputs, applying these criteria through procurement processes, including tender evaluation and ongoing supplier risk management.
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