Rolls-Royce Redundancies Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Gill Furniss
Main Page: Gill Furniss (Labour - Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough)Department Debates - View all Gill Furniss's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that aerospace is one of the sectors in which our already strong reputation is growing. Through the industrial strategy, we are making a big investment in research and development and also in training, including retraining, so that an expanding industry can have access to the skills that it needs in the future. This will benefit her constituents and those of many others around the country.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) for securing this important urgent question. This is deeply disturbing news, not just for the city of Derby, which relies heavily on Rolls-Royce for local employment, but for the sector as a whole. Despite Rolls-Royce making a substantial profit of £4.9 billion last year, this recent restructuring means that more than 4,000 workers will lose their jobs. This is on top of 5,000 job cuts already announced by the company after a series of rationalisation programmes. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the company to ensure that it will honour previous commitments that there will be no compulsory redundancies?
Will the Secretary of State also outline what assessment the Government have made of the economic impact on local communities that are reliant on Rolls-Royce jobs? There is a real risk that redundancies of this scale will have a detrimental effect on the future of skills in a sector with a substantial skills gap. What action will he take to ensure that these vital skills are not lost? What measures will the Government take to directly support a reinvigorated local industrial strategy? Finally, will the Secretary of State tell us whether he has made any assessment of the causes and of the potential knock-on effect on jobs in the supply chain, and what steps he is taking to support the automotive and aerospace sector more generally?