PLANS to build two new aircraft carriers that have prompted a massive reorganisation of Hampshire's shipbuilding industry may now be shelved due to a funding crisis at the Ministry of Defence, MPs have warned.
The £4 billion project could be the most high profile victim of pressures on the MoD's equipment budget, which are so great the Commons Defence Committee said it may prove impossible to resolve them simply by scaling back or delaying orders.
Any move to postpone or axe the project could have a major impact on the job prospects of hundreds of people in Hampshire which are riding on the fortunes of the two carriers, which are due in service by 2012 and 2015.
The MoD has acknowledged that all the projects in its major equipment programme are coming under scrutiny in a "planning round" described as more "challenging" than any since the 1970s.
Hampshire defence companies VT and BAE have agreed to pool their shipbuilding interests into a joint venture in order to undertake the massive project, but the deal hinges on the order for the carriers being made. Construction of the carriers would be the main work of the joint venture, which would be expected to have a turnover of more than £700m and to employ about 6,850 people, including 600 staff at its £50m state-of-the-art shipbuilding facility in Portsmouth.
Difficult decisions'
MPs also called on the MoD to explain why it found itself in such difficulties with its equipment programme at a time when the overall defence budget was increasing in real terms.
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"The MoD needs to take the difficult decisions which will lead to a realistic and affordable equipment programme," it said.
"This may well mean cutting whole equipment programmes, rather than just delaying orders or making cuts to the number of platforms ordered across a range of equipment programmes."
The committee pointed to two projects currently in the assessment phase - a new fleet of support tankers for the Royal Navy and a replacement for the RAF's Lynx helicopter - which could be vulnerable if there were wholesale cuts.
MPs said three major military projects - the Nimrod MRA4 aeroplane, Astute submarine and the Hampshire built Type-45 destroyer, had together accumulated delays totalling almost 14 years and cost overruns of £2.9 billion.
Posted by: Darren, Southampton on 8:06pm Wed 16 Apr 08
On the day a crumy cruise ship is being named. This government can risk billions on a bank that should of gone to the wall. But it will mess around with our shipyards, and risk thier exsistence through their own incompedence. We need to ask, what is the use of these officials, and civil service non jobs that are involved with delaying, and causing the cost to go up on these carriers. Just to save a few million. It's pathetic, when the risk, and loss, involved is herrific. We all know a doubling in the defense budget is the answer.
Our yards have always been messed about by labour since the war, and it's still the same. They have undermined our country's unity, betrayed overseen, and helped for more un-necessary industrial decline, cause by high cost of living (dying of a thousand cuts), consumerisum, buying far east goods, having a huge budget deficit, relying on the house market, finance business, service jobs, not needed public sector jobs with too high a wage, immigrants, the break down, and desruction of this country's values, culture, soul and whatt it stands for, and about, etc the list goes on, and is very long.
Build these carriers, and mars ships in this country, or it will be seen as a total betrayal of the nation. Money, even if it cost's more ((because we had no subsidy) and cost of labour had gone up because of what I said), is better spent in this country, than the tax payers money going abroad. The expensive stuff, is not the hull, but that's not talked of going abroad. Project management will be British. Woopedee. But they will not be on far eastern wages, or east euoropean wages equivalent. Something stinks in this country.
On the day a crumy cruise ship is being named. This government can risk billions on a bank that should of gone to the wall. But it will mess around with our shipyards, and risk thier exsistence through their own incompedence. We need to ask, what is the use of these officials, and civil service non jobs that are involved with delaying, and causing the cost to go up on these carriers. Just to save a few million. It's pathetic, when the risk, and loss, involved is herrific. We all know a doubling in the defense budget is the answer.
Our yards have always been messed about by labour since the war, and it's still the same. They have undermined our country's unity, betrayed overseen, and helped for more un-necessary industrial decline, cause by high cost of living (dying of a thousand cuts), consumerisum, buying far east goods, having a huge budget deficit, relying on the house market, finance business, service jobs, not needed public sector jobs with too high a wage, immigrants, the break down, and desruction of this country's values, culture, soul and whatt it stands for, and about, etc the list goes on, and is very long.
Build these carriers, and mars ships in this country, or it will be seen as a total betrayal of the nation. Money, even if it cost's more ((because we had no subsidy) and cost of labour had gone up because of what I said), is better spent in this country, than the tax payers money going abroad. The expensive stuff, is not the hull, but that's not talked of going abroad. Project management will be British. Woopedee. But they will not be on far eastern wages, or east euoropean wages equivalent. Something stinks in this country.
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