BAE Systems Barrow will get all seven Astute submarines - Hutton
Last updated 14:17, Monday, 26 January 2009
FURNESS MP and Defence Secretary John Hutton has promised that Barrow will get all seven Astute nuclear submarines it expects despite the recession.
INTERVIEW: Business reporter John Simpson meets MP John Hutton at the Evening Mail offices
And Mr Hutton has said he is confident that with the Trident missile successor submarines, the shipyard will have work well into the 2020s.
Mr Hutton has been Barrow's MP for 17 years and has held three big-hitting Secretary of Stateships in employment, business and defence.
In an exclusive interview with the Evening Mail, Mr Hutton said the shipyard was on a "rising tide" in its fortunes.
He appeared to scotch fears sparked by the current financial crisis that the government might cut defence projects like the Astute nuclear-powered subs - four of which have been ordered so far.
Mr Hutton said: "We are absolutely committed to building seven Astute submarines.
"The Royal Navy needs them, the country needs them, we need them locally and they are going to be very capable submarines for the Royal Navy, so there is no question at all about that. In the current climate, it is more important than ever that the government sticks to the commitments that it has made.
"We are not planning to cut defence spending, far from it, defence spending is rising and that is a good thing.
"And as far as the north west is concerned, whether it is shipbuilding, whether it is the aerospace industry, we have major investments going into the north west that will help secure thousands of jobs."
Mr Hutton said the government knew the danger of creating new gaps in work.
"No one needs to be told about the reality of what happens when you don't plan for the long term," he said. "For the people in Barrow there wasn't long-term planning in the 1990s and, as a result, we lost a lot of skills and expertise.
"That has made it hard for us when we wanted to build new hunter-killer class submarines, the Astute class, to do so properly, effectively and efficiently. We aren't going to repeat that mistake."
When it comes to the shipyard and nuclear submarines, Mr Hutton said, it is his job as Defence Secretary to make sure there is a steady "drumbeat of orders to keep the skills and expertise together."
Mr Hutton said despite the credit crunch, the town could be glad the shipyard's fortunes are on the up.
He said: "All the years I have been the MP in Barrow, all of them, we have lost jobs in the shipyard and that's because defence spending had come down and we know the consequences of that.
"Defence spending is now rising and, as a result, there are nearly 2,000 more people working in the shipyard now from its lowest point a few years ago and BAE are planning to recruit more people for the shipyard in 2009.
"I can't remember a time when that has been so.
"So, we are on a rising tide when it comes to employment at the shipyard, not on a falling tide.
"There are over 300 young people doing their apprenticeships in the shipyard and there was a time when there was no young people going in at all.
"I am not saying all the problems have been solved.
"I am saying the future for the best part of a generation is looking long and secure. I hope people feel it is not just a job they have got in BAE Systems, but that it is a career that they can plan.
"That has always been top of my priorities for what I wanted to see happen in Barrow."
Cutbacks in defence spending in the mid 1990s hit Barrow hard.
But now Britain has the biggest naval construction programme since the Second World War, with carriers, nuclear submarines and Type-45 destroyers.
Mr Hutton said: "It's a big programme of naval construction and we have got the Trident successor coming along as well."
Mr Hutton said a seven-boat Astute programme will keep the yard going up to the Trident successor submarine programme.
And Mr Hutton said of the recession hitting the country: "We are entering unprecedented economic times.
"The situation has shaken to the foundations the international financial system.
"Its cause had been a collapse of confidence in the international financial system."
Mr Hutton vowed the government would "stand by hard working folk" in the recession and maintain public spending.
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