Trade unions have welcomed Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement that new laws will allow the government to prioritise British shipbuilding and steel in major procurement contracts.
Speaking at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, Reeves said the reforms would treat sectors such as steel and shipbuilding as critical national infrastructure, strengthening economic security and creating jobs.
Reeves told delegates: “We are putting Britain first, empowering us to prioritise British-built ships and British-forged steel. Strengthening our national economic security and creating manufacturing jobs here in Britain. Because where things are made, and who makes them, does matter.” She also pledged that new legislation would ensure “there must be a future, there will be a future, for steel forged here on British soil.”
The GMB Union called the plan “incredible news for the UK’s proud shipbuilding sector.” General Secretary Gary Smith said: “For generations, our fantastic yards have kept the country safe; from the ships that beat the Armada to those that sunk the Bismarck. This policy will reinvigorate the UK’s shipyards – and the communities built around them.”
Prospect also welcomed the reforms, describing them as a shift towards long-term planning.
General Secretary Mike Clancy said: “For too long our procurement system has been pointing in the wrong direction, fixated on headline cost and ignoring other factors such as supporting good quality jobs. Under the last government we saw important shipbuilding contracts go to foreign firms, while our own yards were desperate for work. A more strategic procurement process can promote long-term skills planning and lead to ambitious industrial partnerships.”
Both unions urged the government to implement the changes with high ambition to ensure that future contracts maximise the number of skilled, unionised jobs across the UK.
Ohh I’m so going to sound like a stuck record.. this is typical of this present goverment … gesture politics, what will protect and grow British ship building and steel is the MOD actuality ordering more ships , spending cash to buy ships that every assessment of the navy shows is needed 10-12-AAW destroyers, 10 ASW frigates, 10 GP frigates and about 10 patrol vessels.. it’s simple really provide the work and they will grow
I see them ordering 5 more T31 as it doesn’t cost that much and it grows the fleet.
Maybe as well the MRSS camel LOD/LOH/Dock thingy will get ordered.
That way all three yards are busy for the foreseeable.
You will notice the quote is ‘UK forged steel’….so post processing not virgin production.
Absolutely, the RN should never have dropped below 30 Escorts.
I would refine that as
12 x T26
12 x up-gunned T31
9 x T45/ T83
I would back that up with a fleet of the suggested flexibility armed and lean manned (12/24 crew) 2500 ton ( perhaps push to 3000 ton) catamaran corvettes. Reconfigurable as patrol vessels, with plug in and play main gun, or replaced with silos as missile platforms, or towed array, mine warfare systems. etc
Such a beast, if done right, would rewrite the rules and be the 21 century Dreadnought.
That would restore mass back to the fleet….
We’ll see how much they prioritise British shipbuilding when the much vaunted equipment plan gets published. It has a lot to live up to.
I doubt we will see much for the navy in the equipment plan now. If Babcock wins those orders all our shipyards will be full until 2035. We wont have any chance to grow the navy.
all you will see is three MRSS built in the Spanish city of Belfast.
the navy will be staying at 19 escorts with lots of drones “planned” but not procured.
Tempest, SSN A, Trident warheads and the Army will eat all the equipment plan for the next decade.
It depends what is being done.
If we are building hulls with major items installed for final fit elsewhere then it is possible to increase build throughput.
The actual choke point isn’t making the hulls it is fitting them out. That is partly a skills crunch and partly a QA crunch that came out of SuperGlue#1 [OPV] and SuperGlue#2 [Nuclear lagging].
Many on here, and NL, have pointed out the inefficiencies of the current tasking QA processes. This is why various bods were let go – new thinking required…..to improve efficiency and QA hand in hand rather than seeing the two things as being in conflict.
Indeed. Hull fabrication is no longer the bottleneck. fitting out is.
Best option all round is if we just build the hulls and leave fitting out to the country that ordered the ship.
But the fitting out is the high value high skills but.
….capacity !!
The RN badly needs new frigates.
To be fair UK does not have two modern build halls with cranes etc built in as well as panel lines including coating processes. Those can definitely be pumped up.
As Babcock said they could easily built another full hall next to the existing one if the demand rose to that level. They were very clear that there was space and that planning had been done for such an eventuality.
Cool so use the profits from the £10billion Norway sale to build more ships for the Navy.
what profits? BAE makes the type 26 and we don’t own it.
Doesnt the UK have a 30% stake in BAE? Plus surely there’ll be tax on it right?
The government have a golden share, meaning they can veto changes to the articles of association. I don’t think they have any financial stake. As for taxes, the Treasury takes that and it gets swallowed by general expenditure.
However, let’s assume that the tax take was available for shipbuilding use, someone would still have to create new infrastructure, employ and train the shipbuilders and manage the projects. maintenance capacity would also have to significantly increase, or we’d continue to see ships laid up, possibly for years, awaiting refit. To achieve that, Government needs to give a longer term commitment on the medium term size of the Navy, or there’ll be no permanent increase in build or maintenance capacity. Money is necessary — Lord knows it’s necessary — but it’s not sufficient.
Fair enough. I should’ve thought that through. Cheers!
Depends on who owns the IP for T26.
T26 was a government sponsored design, rather than a commercial risk, so I suspect that UKPLC owns that rather than BAE. But it might be a bad contract……
As foreign sales are government to government treaty based anything could be written into those in terms of payments.
if only we actually made anything with steel or actually produced significant amounts of steel this might actually make a difference.
what about coal? Surly we should use British coal to make steel, What about Iron ore, We should open up the mines again get those lazy Gen Z kids down a pit and teach them what for.
Outside of the railway which pretty much uses all British steel the UK government doesn’t buy 5,000 tones of decent steel a year. Steel cost about £1,000 a tone so your talking about £5 million per annum.
we spend more on paper clips.
Jim paper clips are made of steel.. so all the government has to do is commit to British paper clips and the steel industry is secure 😄
The UK has dropped to 36th in the world for steel production.
It grieves me because I grew up in a steel-making town where the local plant was said to be the most advanced in Europe at the time.
After numerous takeovers the plant has lost its blast furnaces and is reduced to treating product made elsewhere.
We use plenty of steel. For example HS2 is right now using very large amounts of it in all the bridging and of course the rails themselves, then there’s all those warships we’re building too. Might not be getting the steel from the UK because that would make far too much sense but it’s certainly being used.
Has anyone told the snp? Forget it being last government sending orders abroad, the snp is currently doing it even though the state owns a yard and has major influence on the shipping companies
As far a steel making is concerned, the damage is already done and it started many years ago.
Selling off parts of this important industry to Tata was a huge mistake.
I can only agree with Jonathan.
Gestures and words.
ORDER SOMETHING!!!!
All it has to do now is order more ships…
They’ll do it if they win the next election.
No, if they win then their reward is more complaceny. They’ll only order more if they want headlines in the run up to an election, then their succcessors will cancel the order
Do we have still have a steel industry to do this and, if so, there energy costs need to go down and not uo