As BAE scales down operations in Portsmouth, news of an end to shipbuilding at the historic yard is greeted with dismay by unions. Hundreds more jobs in Scotland are also to be cut.
One of Britain’s oldest ship building sites, is making its last warships.
The English fleet set off from Portsmouth to fight the Spanish Armada in 1588, and in 1944 ships left from there for the D-Day landings, but all warship building in Portsmouth will stop next year when defence company BAE Systems shrinks its operations.
1,775 people in the UK will lose their jobs as defence company BAE Systems laid off a lot of workers as a contract winds up.
Portsmouth takes the brunt of the pull-back with 940 jobs lost and the closure of the shipyard.
A further 835 jobs will be cut in BAE workplaces in the Govan yard in Glasgow and a much smaller number at Filton, near Bristol.
BAE will retain a presence in Portsmouth, but to service ships rather than making them: an engineering team will be retained to support the new Type 26 warships, which will be built in Glasgow.
BAE said it was being hit by a “significant” reduction in workload following the peak of activity on the aircraft carrier programme.
The grim news was given to workers at a series of meetings at 11am across the affected sites, before they were allowed to go home for the rest of the day.
“We saw this coming five or six years ago, ” one Westminster source said, but the way it leaked out has been “over-spun” and “risks giving Alex Salmond the credit” – ie, his referendum has saved Govan’s bacon. – See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/1800-dock-jobs-anger-spin/26930#sthash.RFbqh2Tm.dpuf
Politicians are worried about the impact on local areas, with the yards having very important impacts on the local area.
“This is devastating for the workers and their families but also for all those people involved in the supply chain that keeps the dockyard working,” said Gerald Vernon-Jackson, leader of Portsmouth City Council.
He condemned the decision to shut down the last remaining shipyard in England with the capability to build advanced surface warships, saying it was bad news for the defence of the UK and for the Royal Navy.
But Defence Secretary Philip Hammond told the Commons that every effort would be made to redeploy workers, and that compulsory redundancies would be kept to a minimum:
“The loss of a shipmaking capability will be a harsh blow to Portsmouth,” said the minister, who announced that more than £100m will be invested in the city’s naval base so it can accommodate new warships.
Scottish Conservative leader and Glasgow MSP Ruth Davidson said it has been “an extremely difficult day for shipbuilding workers on the Clyde”.
She said: “The aircraft carrier project was one of the Royal Navy’s biggest and, as a private company, BAE Systems needed to ensure that once that project was completed, new orders could be found so that jobs could be retained.
“I am pleased a contract for three new offshore patrol vessels has been awarded to BAE Systems today and will be built on the Clyde. This should bridge the gap between the carrier project ending and the type-26 Global Combat Ship being built, ensuring that skills are retained and both Scotstoun and Govan yards are secured for the future.
“Glasgow will remain the UK’s shipbuilding capital.”
Politicians in Portsmouth, including local Conservative MPs, have claimed that the closure of the Portsmouth yard and consolidation of BAE shipbuilding in Glasgow, was a political decision motivated by a desire to make Scottish independence less appealing.
But as C4’s Political Editor Gary Gibbon’s blog from earlier today points out, the Portsmouth closure has been on the cards for a long time, for industrial and geographic reasons.
Mr Hammond told Parliament today that the job cuts and closure of the Portsmouth yard was a consquence of the coalition “acting as the Government of the United Kingdom in the best interests of the whole of the United Kingdom, looking at where best to deliver Britain’s warship-building capability in the United Kingdom in order to make it sustainable and cost effective in the future”.
“We saw this coming five or six years ago, ” one Westminster source said, but the way it leaked out has been “over-spun” and “risks giving Alex Salmond the credit” – ie, his referendum has saved Govan’s bacon. – See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/1800-dock-jobs-anger-spin/26930#sthash.RFbqh2Tm.dpuf
“We saw this coming five or six years ago, ” one Westminster source said, but the way it leaked out has been “over-spun” and “risks giving Alex Salmond the credit” – ie, his referendum has saved Govan’s bacon. – See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/1800-dock-jobs-anger-spin/26930#sthash.RFbqh2Tm.dpuf