IT’S OK...IT’S STILL UNDER WARRANTY!
DEFENCE SEC’S RESPONSE TO LEAKING £3BILLION CARRIER
Repairs will be paid by builder
REPAIRS to a leaking HMS Queen Elizabeth, the UK’s new £3.1billion aircraft carrier, will not cost the British taxpayer a penny, the Defence Secretary has insisted.
He said the builders would foot the bill for the repairs – basically telling the nation “It’s under warranty!”
The warship, the biggest and most powerful ever built by the UK, was only accepted into the Royal Navy fleet by the Queen earlier this month.
Pressed on suggestions that repairs could cost millions, Gavin Williamson said the money would come “from the contractors who built her”.
“This isn’t going to cost the British taxpayer a penny,” he said, as it was revealed a leaky seal was causing water to pour into the behemoth warship.
Fixing
The vessel, which is 65,000 tons and 919ft long, has an estimated working life of half a century and is believed to have been leaking for some time.
It is understood the cost of fixing the leak will not cost millions as reported, but that the bill could reach into the hundreds of thousands. Mr Williamson went on: “This is the reason why we have the sea trials, to make sure that everything is working absolutely perfectly.
“HMS Queen Elizabeth is the most magnificent aircraft carrier in the world and, when she is fully operational and she is being deployed right around the world, she is going to make a significant difference as to what we can actually achieve and what we are able to do as a global power.”
A spokeswoman for the Aircraft Carrier Alliance said the leaky seal was known about prior to HMS Queen Elizabeth being commissioned and accepted into the Royal Navy.
She added that the vessel could be taken to sea, that the problem is expected to take a couple of days to fix, and that it should be rectified in the new year without any need to take the ship into a dry dock.
She added: “It is normal practice for a volume of work and defect resolution to continue following vessel acceptance.
“This will be completed prior to the nation’s flagship recommencing her programme at sea in 2018.”