Rolls-Royce is to put £300 million into its British factories at Derby, Bristol, Glasgow and Rotherham, John Healey announced in his first Labour Party conference speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer, presenting the commitment as evidence of returning confidence in British industry.
The Chancellor tied the announcement to the city where the company’s aero engine business has its roots. “In Derby, where they made the Spitfire engines, Rolls-Royce now build nuclear reactors and put the UK at the front,” he said, describing the investment as part of what he called a new age of industrialisation and a new confidence in Britain lit by the government.
Alongside it he announced a £100 million Local Apprenticeship Service fund for mayors to expand apprenticeship provision in their areas, and cited six billion pounds of government contracts for British shipbuilding.
Rolls-Royce holds a position in British defence that few other companies come close to, and its Derby operation at Raynesway designs and builds the pressurised water reactors that power every Royal Navy submarine, work that is expanding for the Dreadnought ballistic missile boats and the SSN-AUKUS attack submarines to follow them, and the site has been through a substantial expansion of its own in recent years with government support. The company’s small modular reactor business, selected in 2025 as the technology partner for Great British Energy’s nuclear programme, draws on the same engineering base.
Bristol is home to the company’s defence aerospace operation, which covers the LiftSystem for the F-35B, the EJ200 that powers the Typhoon and work feeding into the Global Combat Air Programme. Glasgow at Inchinnan and Rotherham both sit within the wider manufacturing network, with Rotherham a centre for advanced manufacturing research alongside the University of Sheffield.
The Chancellor set the announcement within an argument about young people and work, telling delegates that the best thing that can be offered to a young person is not a benefit payment but a first job, and that he refuses to write off a million young people. The Alan Milburn review, he said, had laid bare the scale of the challenge, with the number not in employment, education or training having risen to close to a million and two thirds of them never having worked.
Healey represents Rawmarsh and Conisbrough, and returned repeatedly to the coalfield history of his own area, describing the miner’s lamp on his shelf at home as having come from Cortonwood Colliery, where the miners’ strike began, and noting that the last pit in the area at Silverwood closed in 1994. “The jobs went away. Hope and opportunity went too,” he said, recalling that one in three men in the area were unemployed.
Well done Rolls, but what is it to do with Healey? Answer, nothing.
The Govt is in fact offering incentives to RR for its investments in its factories for both aerospace and nuclear projects even though the details haven’t been specified yet. GBE however as a crucial backer of its modular reactors will be one such direct/indirect incentiviser no doubt.
The article says Rolls are investing very specifically. and the government saying that they will offer incentives without an amount or a timescale means nothing.
… as Abraham Lincoln observed “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Good quote. I like it.
Interesting that Bentley launched their new all electric SUV last week by claiming it’s built in the very factory that used to build RR Merlins. Seems they are all desperate for the links. Fact is they were built in various factories so really just a nice pr win. I suppose if Rover still existed they would be claiming the same thing, though Land Rover can still boast about how they built Hercules engines, indeed the factory was actually built to build aero engines not cars. Let’s resurrect Riley so they can revive the Kestral links after all it was the most successful aero engine in the World inter war. Geez even Ford built Merlins in Britain even as poor old Edsel got harangued by his Nazi sympathising dad for initially offering to build them in the US. Thank god Packard are defunct.
I can’t imagine there’s much growth (if any) outside of industries funded by the taxpayer.
You imagine completely and totally wrongly! There is plenty.
The annual growth rate for industry is less than 1% and out of that amenic growth how much of it is driven by taxpayers cash, such as RR nuclear division? The part that has no reliance on taxpayers for either purchases or direct subsidy might already be in recession.
Healy gobbing off about stuff already sorted and in the pipeline well before this throbber jacked on the defence job in that secret (but now so fucking obvious) deal to become head shed of the “socialist spend others money club”. Shit lizards every last one of them!
ahhh, did didums get all upset by the big nasty Chancellor, do you need a hug? A therapist? … more likely a psychoanalyst.
“socialist spend others money club”, Well, of course, it’s a well known fact that the Conservative’s only ever spent money out of their own personal wallets.
The current government has committed over £3 billion in total funding directly tied to Rolls-Royce’s nuclear programs.
jog on.
Ah diddums did the nasty man say nasty things about your socialist hero’s!
AHH didums did the right winger get it totally wrong again……
Ah two avatars, typical left wing cowardice to defend your incompetence and child like comments Yaaaaaaaawn.
Er, as in everything else you have said you are totally wrong! Only the one avatar, Enobob, I just joined in as there are far more of us than there are of you!