Royal Navy’s supply ships will be built by Uk-led teams
BRITISH shipbuilding has been given a boost after the Defence Secretary announced three support ships for the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers will be made by Uk-led teams.
A competition to build the new £1.5 billion vessels, to join HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales as part of the Carrier Strike Group, launches in the spring. While it will invite international companies to collaborate, the Ministry of Defence said the successful team must be led by a British company. Ben Wallace said: “Shipbuilding has historically been a British success story, and I am determined to revitalise this amazing industry as part of this Government’s commitment to build back better.”
Lord West, the former First Sea Lord, said: “I am delighted the Treasury has seen sense and realised ordering ships offshore is not the best thing. This is very good news for British shipbuilding.”
HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales were assembled in Rosyth Dockyard, Scotland, and there has been a regular turnout of nuclear submarines, with one under construction at Barrowin-furness. Three Type 26 Frigates are under way at Govan on the Clyde.
The announcement came after The Telegraph revealed that British shipbuilding would be favoured for government contracts under Boris Johnson’s defence review. The review is understood to be considering changes to EUderived rules that prevented the UK from prioritising domestic firms.
Last month the Prime Minister and Mr Wallace hinted that the building of Royal Navy supply ships would stay in the UK. The vessels were due to go to tender as they were not classed as warships. However, Mr Wallace told the Commons last month that the vessels were warships, raising the possibility that they would be built in Britain.
Mr Johnson had hinted at a flux of UK shipbuilding at the end of the Brexit transition period in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference this month. The MOD said “hundreds of highly skilled jobs would be created”.
The announcement comes after the UK signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Australia on a joint programme to build the next generation of Type 26 frigates, sustaining 1,700 jobs in Scotland and 4,000 more in the maritime supply chain until 2035.