What better place than IFSEC (2018 show floor from upstairs, pictured) to talk about exports by UK security companies? Yesterday afternoon we met Dr Hugo Rosemont of the defence and security trade association ADS Group.
Over coffee Hugo went over his talk to the recent 3CDSE event at Great Malvern (as an aside, that Three Counties Defence and Security Expo is spreading its wings, going from a single day to a two-day event in 2019, on May 29 and 30, at the same Worcestershire venue).
Professional Security readers may not be as familiar with ADS as with the British Security Industry Association. While the BSIA has an exports section, many of its members are from UK-based guarding firms; whereas ADS also covers aerospace and indeed space. An ADS member, for example, is BAE Systems. While you’ll find ADS members and the trade body at the Farnborough airshow in July, ADS also runs for the Home Office the invite-only Security and Policing exhibition at Farnborough each March. While ADS and BSIA interests overlap, then, they do work together and with others on the exports side, of common interest.
As for the UK political background to security exports, in 2014 the UK Trade and Investment Defence and Security Organisation (UKTI DSO) and the Home Office published a security export strategy. Briefly, as the document said, it was in everyone’s interests to export more of security products and services – good for the economy in general, and the UK has a good reputation for doing security, not least after the smooth running of the London 2012 Olympics. A bugbear is actually turning that into action, both by various government departments (also the Ministry of Defence, and Foreign Office having a point of view) let alone between those departments and export firms large and small, and researchers in universities (as featured from the 3CDSE event, in the July 2018 print issue of Professional Security magazine).
Back to Hugo, who since last year has been Director – Security and Resilience at ADS. Earlier, he advised on crime and security policy at the British Retail Consortium trade body. He said: “The growth of the [security] sector is welcome beyond many sectors and indeed some sub-sectors of what we think of as security, like cyber, are growing at a rate of about 15 per cent annually, and those are quite conservative estimates. And there are other sectors of high growth we see at IFSEC, like drone technology, where the UK has real expertise and a fantastic opportunity.” Hugo was at the show on day three, when ‘keynote arena’ topics included drones.
The UK Government, Hugo reported, is refreshing that 2014 strategy; and ADS is engaging with members and others to see what can be done to ensure that those government departments, police, and industry, promote UK security exports ‘more assertively’.
As Hugo said in the interview, the UK does have ‘great strength in the brand’, particularly in counter-terrorism policing; with interest overseas in ‘how the Brits do it’, which the UK should be harnessing. Hugo acknowledged the work of the Cambridge-based Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC), a unit of the Home Office; and the Department for International Trade, set up in July 2016, that is, after the Brexit vote. Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations to leave the European Union, ADS wants to ensure the maximising of the UK’s security export potential; and is doing work across Government departments, and with others, on the details. As Hugo set out, not only are UK security exports helping to fulfil the economic potential of companies, but it helps UK national security.
By UK security exports, Hugo meant (and wants the updated strategy to reflect) not only selling the proverbial black box piece of hardware, and physical protection; it might be security advice to a sports stadium, or cyber penetration testing, risk consultancy on geopolitics, or training (among other things).
Last but not least, a line about Hugo; his doctorate was from the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London; and last year KCL made him a Visiting Senior Research Fellow.
Full interview in the August 2018 print issue of Professional Security magazine.
IFSEC 2019 will run again Tuesday to Thursday, June 18 to 20 at London Excel.
