Lord West of Spithead
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National Shipbuilding Strategy
Lord West of Spithead Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Lord Coaker (Lab)
The National Shipbuilding Office is based in the MoD but works across government. There is a review of the export guarantee, the fundamental point of which is that, where we have exports and ships that need to be built, there is access to finance. We are not satisfied with how that is working at present, and the review is going on to see if we can do better.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, a shipbuilding strategy is meaningless unless there are not just orders for ships, but a drumbeat of orders. I spent 15 years on the Opposition Benches pointing out to the then Government that we needed to get some orders going and get them in quickly, so that there was a programme of build; otherwise the Navy would be decimated—which it has been. There is now a threat to the continuous at-sea deterrence, for the same reason. Will the Minister speak to the right honourable John Healey and the Treasury? We must have a sequence of orders, a drumbeat of orders, or we will not get the shipyards and SMEs to recruit people, invest and get apprenticeships. It will be meaningless unless we manage to do this.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The Government are seeking to do exactly what my noble friend points out. The important point he makes is the necessity for a drumbeat: you cannot build a ship in one place and then, three years later, go back and try to build another ship; you have to have a continuous programme. The shipbuilding pipeline that has been outlined was partly intended to address that. We are already starting to see the MoD place orders for ships. I have mentioned Rosyth and the Clyde, and other shipbuilding orders are being made at various shipyards across the country. I say to my noble friend that I will be one of those advocating to make sure that, as far as possible, orders for ships required in the UK are built at British yards. I take the point he is really making, which is about the need for more ships.