Employees of defence companies are being refused bank accounts by challenger banks and defence firms are struggling to find landlords willing to rent them property, a senior industry figure has told parliament.
John Howie, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Babcock, made the revelation during an evidence session of the Scottish Affairs Committee on Wednesday, telling MPs that the perception problem facing the defence industry had moved well beyond public attitudes and was now affecting the basic ability of companies and their workers to operate.
“Today, some people find landlords who will not rent property to defence companies,” Howie told the committee, adding that challenger banks, the smaller app-based financial institutions that have emerged as alternatives to traditional high street banks, “will not give employees of defence companies a bank account.”
Howie said the industry’s response was that there was no ethical issue with defence, describing it as “a mandate from a democratically elected Government” and therefore “not only ethical but entirely legal”, but acknowledged that when a bank refuses to give someone a bank account because of where they work, “that must rub off on them and make them a bit twitchy.”
The problem extends beyond individuals to small businesses in the defence supply chain, with Babcock’s Leonardo colleague Mark Stead telling the committee that SMEs in the sector faced the prospect of their sites being targeted or “potentially smashed up” because of their association with defence, making some companies think twice about operating in the sector at all, and adding that defence workers often felt they could not speak openly about what they did even though they were “fiercely proud of the difference that they make every day.”
Stead also described more direct examples of anti-defence sentiment affecting the industry’s operations, telling MPs that a year ago Edinburgh council removed Leonardo’s recruitment advertising from the city’s trams because the company was part of the defence industry, and that the company had experienced five or six blockade protests where police prioritised keeping the peace over enabling around 3,000 workers to access their site to support what he described as “critical operations right now.”
Howie contrasted the situation with the United States, where he said investment managers told him they had “a patriotic duty to invest in defence because the armed forces are an extension of the country”, whereas in the UK he had spoken to people who “almost look with distaste at the idea that we might be creating weapons of mass destruction.” He also told MPs that university recruitment fairs were increasingly difficult for defence companies to attend, not because universities objected but because factions within them would “sabotage” stands with posters, making staff reluctant to talk openly about their work outside the company.
Howie said the cultural gap between the UK and the US was something government and industry needed to address together, and pointed to the contrast with other countries’ attitudes toward defence as an example of how far the UK had to travel, telling the committee about a conversation with a Polish minister who said his country had a simple answer to public scepticism about defence spending: “You in the UK are worrying about whether you go to war or not. We already are.”