An open letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham: Back Portsmouth with £2.4bn satellite contract

Today The News calls for the PM to match his words with action:

Read why we are doing this here.

Read our full letter - backed by Portsmouth City Council leader Steve Pitt - below

The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP

Prime Minister

10 Downing Street

London

SW1A 2AA

Dear Prime Minister,

Skynet is Britain's most secure military communications system, which 17 NATO allies rely on for world leading capabilities.

Within weeks, your government will decide whether it's built by Airbus in Portsmouth or by an American-owned company, Lockheed Martin. Get this wrong, and 70 years of UK design authority and sovereign satellite capability walks out of the city with it, leaving Britain dependent on foreign blueprints.

Portsmouth has a proud military history. From the time the first dry dock was built here in 1495, right through to Portsmouth’s role in hosting 156,000 allied troops before D-Day, this military history has been at the heart of our city’s story.

It was great to see early recognition of this from you when, within your first weeks in No 10, you met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Portsmouth Naval Base. Five Ukrainian minehunter vessels will be stationed here, underlining the role the city continues to play in defence and how our country works with allies to keep us all safe.

And I hope that one of the first key decisions of your Secretary of State for Defence Wes Streeting will reinforce the role Portsmouth plays by announcing the next generation of the military satellite communications system Skynet will be built here.

Portsmouth has been at the heart of how Skynet and many other military satellites have been delivered for the UK and globally. From its premises in Portsmouth, Airbus Defence & Space has made our city home to world-class design, development, production and assembly facilities for satellites made for space agencies, militaries and governments around the world. Including the Skynet satellites. This has made Portsmouth a crucial piece of the UK space ecosystem and the UK’s sovereign space capability, which keeps our country ahead of its enemies and a leader among its friends. We are really good at this.

But this could all change.

It would be a huge blow to Portsmouth if the decision goes against Airbus. Potentially ending the Airbus presence in Portsmouth after more than 70 years, taking with it not only the people that work on Skynet but the thousands of supply chain jobs and skills in the area that the presence of Airbus underpins.

However, were Airbus to win the contract, it would be a huge boost for our city and the wider UK economy. Local people will have the confidence that their high-quality jobs are secure. It will protect the pipeline for skilled young people to get jobs at Airbus or elsewhere locally through their Apprenticeships’ Clearing scheme and the Early Careers Centre, which was recently opened by your MP for Portsmouth North Amanda Martin. And it will be a clear vote of confidence from your government in the work done in Portsmouth by its skilled workers: a decision in and of itself that will send out a signal internationally and support our country’s ability to export satellites from Portsmouth to the world.

We have been very encouraged by your pledge to back jobs by buying British and supporting economic opportunities in every postcode across our country. You could not have been clearer in your visit to the city in July when you said you are “taking power from Whitehall and Westminster,” in an effort to “put it into communities on the south coast.” Your government’s decision on Skynet is a golden opportunity to follow through on that commitment and show how under you things will be different.

There are families in our community who have worked in our maritime and aerospace sectors for generations. It would be a tragedy if that was put at risk by handing the master design rights and intellectual property to an American company. The consequences would not just be the loss of local jobs, but the permanent surrender of the UK’s sovereign space design authority.

This is a generational decision which will have reverberations across the UK space sector. Your government has the opportunity to back a capability that we have been developing, refining and mastering over nearly three quarters of a century. Why would you not trust your own people to develop this technology?

Again, looking back to your visit earlier this summer, you said: “There is a big reindustrialisation opportunity here, particularly for defence in Portsmouth. People should expect to see plenty of me.”

I hope your Secretary of State for Defence seizes the chance to start delivering against that reindustrialisation opportunity and that both of you will be in Portsmouth soon to celebrate the decision to protect our city’s place at the heart of UK space and its ongoing ability to support our brave armed forces.

You talked about backing Portsmouth. Now there's a decision to be made that will prove it, one way or the other.

Signed:

Mark Waldron, Editor in Chief, The News, Portsmouth

Cllr Steve Pitt, Leader, Portsmouth City Council