The reassurance comes as a union boss claimed that French steel would be used for the new fleet of nuclear submarines.
It is now understood that this is due to a specific type of specialised steel needed for this specific stage of the build not being produced in the UK.
French firm Industeel reportedly won a contract to an amount of steel for the new fleet, it is not currently known what percentage of the submarines will be made of French steel but it is not expected to be the majority.
The MoD responded by saying:
“The Successor programme represents billions of pounds of investment in thousands of British jobs across hundreds of firms from Scotland to the South East.
We source British steel where possible but there was no viable UK bid for this part of the build because no British firm produces the specialised steel needed. We are in an early stage of the programme but there will be British steel in the new submarines and further opportunities for UK suppliers to bid.”
The Successor project will now move into the next stage, known as ‘Delivery Phase 1’, with manufacturing work beginning on structural steel work for the ‘auxiliary machine space’ of the first submarine: this contains switchboards and control panels for the reactor.
The money will also be spent furthering the design of the submarine, purchasing materials and long lead items, and investing in facilities at the BAE Systems yard in Barrow-in-Furness where the submarines will be built.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said:
“Britain’s ballistic missile submarines are the ultimate guarantee of our nation’s safety – we use them every day to deter the most extreme threats.
We cannot know what new dangers we might face in the 2030s, 2040s and 2050s so we are acting now to replace them.
Along with increasing the defence budget to buy new ships, planes and armoured vehicles, this shows that this Government will never gamble with our national security.
The investment will support delivery of the manifesto commitment on which this Government was elected, to retain the Trident-based continuous at sea deterrent – the ultimate guarantee of our safety –and build the new fleet of four Successor Ballistic Missile submarines: securing thousands of highly skilled jobs in the UK.
That commitment was underlined in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review and supported decisively by an overwhelming majority in Parliament on 18 July 2016, sending a strong message to the hundreds of companies involved in the submarine supply chain that they – and their tens of thousands of employees across the country – can keep planning for the future.”
The Successor programme already employs more than 2,600 people across MOD and industry, including 1,800 at BAE Systems.
Thousands more will be employed in the supply chain with an average of 7,800 people expected to be working on Successor each year throughout the duration of the programme.
At peak, in the early 2020s, BAE Systems anticipates employing more than 5,000 people on the Successor programme.
The cutlery contract is probably still available.
Only if British firms bother to bid for it.
Really?? This has changed drastically over the last few months when we were told that British Warships would be built with only British steel.
Its about time we updated our armed forces equipment. And Stop relying on the Americans to bail us out of trouble .
To much man power and to many lives have been waisted all because the government is looking for the cheapest deal they can lay there hands on .our troops are the most professional soldiers in the world and we don’t rely so much on technology more on guts and common since.they have bravery like I never seen.
What measures have been taken to ensure this never happens again?