(G.Hoon was SEC.of State/Defence to 6/5/05). MoD issued its Defence Industrial Strategy paper 12/05 establishing Strategic Partnership Agreements. AgustaWestland signed one 22/6/06. The present Govt. retains them: they are an attempt to reconcile: "the fragility of the wider UK industrial base is such that open international competition could put the sustainment of key industrial capabilities at risk", with the need to extract best value from our £. There is an Open Book notion to attempt to link profit to efficiency.
Always - there are no exceptions - we try to buy jobs with our Defence budget. Always - there are no exceptions - when best value suggests an import, we try to create some jobs - either by offset, or by fitting some UK kit. That costs £. What the User wants is fit kit NOW! What Ministers want is same+jobs+value. No doubt a Commercial Off the Shelf AH-64E would upfront cost less than a WAH-64E. Quite proper for the UK Supplier to lobby. Quite proper for a firm to employ anyone with a little black book of direct numbers (much good may it do).
Be grateful you are not the Minister. Whatever you do will be wrong - in someone's mind.