West Midlands jobs threat as defence cuts loom
SPECULATION was rife today that thousands of jobs across the West Midlands could be under threat as a result of Government defence cuts.
Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to announce the results of the Strategic Defence Review this afternoon and it is likely to herald widespread cutbacks in defence spending.
The defence sector is vital to the West Midlands and supports thousands of manufacturing jobs.
Companies operating in the aerospace sector such as Rolls-Royce, GKN and Ultra Electronics have a particular exposure to the defence industry while firms such as Ricardo with its military variant vehicles are also vulnerable, although it has just received a boost with the Ministry of Defence backing its new Ocelot vehicle.
QinetiQ, which has large scale defence contracts, has already announced it is cutting 260 jobs from its base in Malvern and more are set to follow throughout the company.
Defence Secretary Liam Fox tried to quell fears about the loss of jobs when he spoke at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham a fortnight ago.
He said he wanted the defence supplies not just in the West Midlands, but across the UK as a whole to be innovative and to develop new products that would be useful in the future.
The last thing the MoD wanted, he said, was for intellectual property from UK firms to go abroad.
However, one manufacturer from the Midlands said today this was just what he could see happening.
Peter Everitt, of PowerKut, which has bases in Coventry and Perry Barr, produces gauges for calibrating weapons.
He told the BBC that 15 of his 50 workers faced being laid off if defence contracts were lost.
“These are skilled jobs that you can’t replace and when things pick up again people will start to spend overseas, which is disappointing. It seems we are becoming more reliant on buying goods from overseas,” he said.
Speculation is that the Government will announce the immediate decommissioning of aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the scrapping of the Harrier jet fleet and a delay in the replacement of Trident.
It has said the nature of defence strategy has changed and the focus must be on preventing terrorism and cyber warfare rather than traditional warfare.
