Scottish Labour MSP Paul Sweeney has urged the development of a long-term strategy to sustain shipbuilding in Scotland, warning against the “feast and famine” cycles that have historically plagued the industry.
He said he plans to raise the issue during a forthcoming debate in the Scottish Parliament on the Type 26 programme.
“I’ve actually got a debate in Holyrood on a motion about the Type 26 programme and its opportunities for Scotland and calling for a new, specific Scottish shipbuilding strategy,” Sweeney explained.
He stressed the unprecedented strength of the current order book. “We’ve got an unprecedented order pipeline, biggest export order by value in British history, long term sustainability contracts for refits. The value of this is huge for the country, the biggest surface naval shipbuilding programme in the world, outside of America and China. It fits into a wider opportunity with Canada and Australia, hopefully other potential NATO partners, and then you’ve got the Type 31 component over in Rosyth and potential export deals there as well.”
For Sweeney, the challenge is turning today’s momentum into a permanent foundation. “How do we maximise our long term legacy from this, and it doesn’t just become another transient, 15-year feast and then followed by another period of famine?”
He pointed to future requirements, such as replacing the Type 45 destroyers and developing new command and uncrewed-support ships, as opportunities to secure continuity. “We really need to try and maintain commonality with the design as much as possible, so we can get those benefits from the learning curves of production and design for build friendliness. I think that’s key as a philosophy for naval shipbuilding.”
Skills remain a central concern. “The workforce is full of people in their 40s and 50s and then people in their 20s, and it’s quite narrow around the waist,” he said. “There’s still a significant reliance on agency labour and overseas skilled labour. How are we going to get more people trained? Could we look towards what the nuclear industries have, which is like a common sector-wide early careers programme?”
Sweeney also raised the prospect of restructuring the industry. “I think longer term we need to look at forming a bigger shipbuilding group to be truly competitive at moving beyond the naval work and into actually building a market position in commercial shipbuilding.”
He added that the UK must address structural disadvantages in commercial markets. “Other countries have state investment banks and tax leasing schemes that make their yards more competitive. Without those tools, it’s very hard to see how we’re going to get opportunities in areas like offshore support vessels for the North Sea wind industry.”
