Prime Minister Andy Burnham warned: Don't put Portsmouth Airbus jobs at risk with 'leap into the great unknown'
Government on verge of handing out £2.4bn Skynet contract with reports suggesting Ministry of Defence favours Lockheed Martin
Prime Minister Andy Burnham was today urged not to put at risk a British manufacturing success story in Portsmouth by taking a ’leap into the unknown’ with a multi-billion pound defence contract.
A decision is expected imminently on whether Britain's most secure military communications system - Skynet 6 - is built by Airbus workers in the city or by American-owned Lockheed Martin.
The contract is worth £2.4bn and will provide satellite communications which 17 NATO allies rely on. It was reported this week that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is pushing to sign the deal with the US giant, which is promising to assemble the satellites at a new £85m factory in the north east of England, creating around 500 jobs.
It is thought the Prime Minister has already intervened and wants to have the final say as the move risks contradicting his pledge to “back British workers and businesses” - and a specific pledge made in the summer to support defence in Portsmouth.
In a visit to Portsmouth Naval Base, Mr Burnham made a bold promise to the city that ‘there is a big reindustrialisation opportunity here, particularly for defence in Portsmouth’ - prompting The News to send an open letter to Downing Street asking him to back up the words with actions over the Skynet deal.
The letter - also signed by Portsmouth City Council leader Steve Pitt - urged him to not let 70 years of UK design authority and sovereign satellite capability walk out of the city.
Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham has previously warned that hundreds of jobs are at risk if Airbus loses the contract.
And today a spokesman for the union told The News: ‘Airbus is a British manufacturing success story and we fail to understand why anyone would look to rip that up and start again by taking a leap into the great unknown by awarding this contract to Lockheed Martin.
‘We will continue pressing the case for Portsmouth’
‘Unite has been a long-standing supporter of Airbus and we continue to back the workers in Portsmouth and in Stevenage. We understand the decision making on this contract has gone to Number 10 and we will continue pressing the case for supporting the highly-skilled and capable workers at those sites.’
The spokesman added: ‘Airbus has a well-deserved reputation for successfully manufacturing and supplying the Ministry of Defence with Skynet, work that for the last 20 years has ensured hundreds of skilled jobs in Portsmouth, as well as thousands more in the supply chain.’
The fight for Airbus has also been taken up by Portsmouth North MP Amanda Martin. Along with her Stevenage MP Kevin Bonavia, she wrote to the Prime Minister arguing: “This contract decision is incredibly important for Portsmouth and the future of sovereign space capability in the UK. Across Portsmouth and Stevenage, Airbus already has the skills, expertise and capacity to deliver the Skynet programme. It would take years to replicate these jobs elsewhere in the country.’
Her fears were backed by a senior defence industry expert who said they could not see the business case for going with Lockheed Martin.
They told The News: ‘The Newcastle site does not exist and there is no way on earth that can happen soon. Constructing a facility like this - with clean rooms to build, manufacturing lines running, security clearance set up - will take four to five years. And then you have to create the jobs and find the workers with the right skills. Where are they going to come from? A check of live recruitment data this morning (Friday) showed Lockheed Martin is currently advertising just seven space roles in Newcastle, proving how far away any real footprint actually is.
‘And despite the reassurances from Lockheed Martin the MoD also cannot guarantee that a site will ever be built in the UK because it is not in the contract.
‘Portsmouth is a global centre of excellence for military satellite communications’
‘But, right here and now these facilities and expertise exist - they are with Airbus in Portsmouth and Stevenage. In Portsmouth there is a global centre of excellence for telecoms and military satellite communications.
‘The Government is chasing the promise of jobs in Newcastle. But what about the jobs we already have in Portsmouth and Stevenage? If Lockheed Martin does win the contract and build in Newcastle will we just be moving jobs from Portsmouth and Stevenage further north?
‘The Government is hiding behind the story that there is already enough work for Airbus in the UK but there is not and that is why the Skynet contract is vital to the long-term sustainability of these sites. Without this contract they will continue to be just left with crumbs. Where does it lead to the viability of these two centres in the long term?
‘The call from the Government to keep business in the UK seems to have been rejected from this process.’
Further concern has been raised that the ‘sovereignty’ of the satellites - having the technology designed, built and controlled by the UK as it is now with Airbus - will pass across the Atlantic under a deal with Lockheed Martin as it is expected to source key components and technologies from the US..
This scenario was brought into focus this week after reports that Ukrainian forces’ vital battlefield access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service was temporarily curbed following a row between American President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy about attacks on Russian oil refineries.
The News’ defence insider said: ‘There is no way the US will give away its really sensitive technology. The brains of Skynet - its black box - will be built in the States and then just sent to Newcastle for assembly. So we lose our engineering and design authority.
‘We are sleep walking into the same US hostage situation 40 years later’
"We have seen this week in the Ukraine with Starlink that, at any time, use of the satellites could be blocked by Washington. What would happen if relations between the UK and Argentina over the Falkland Islands sour in five years time? If we wanted to send troops to the South Atlantic the main means of staying in communication with them is through Skynet. But what if the US did not agree with us and decide to just turn it off?’
Another senior defence source said: “The irony is that the biggest building on the Airbus Portsmouth site was built for a secret spy satellite project in the 1980s after the Falklands War because during that conflict the British were denied crucial signal intelligence data from the United States government. So the then Prime Minister quite rightly wanted to ensure the British were never held hostage by the Americans again.
"We are sleep walking into the same US hostage situation 40 years later."
The MoD has said the procurement process for Skynet is ongoing and no decisions have been made. A spokesman told The Telegraph on Thursday that the successful Skynet supplier will be required to have a UK-based “design authority” capable of making changes independently.
But our expert warned this ‘authority’ could literally be a single UK-based sign off process, leaving the core technology under US control.
In the same paper a spokesman for Lockheed Martin said any potential contract would be handled by its UK division. A spokesman told The Telegraph: “Lockheed Martin UK, a British company, will establish facilities to develop an ecosystem alongside our regional partners in the north east of England to provide the UK with a sovereign space capability.“
It will create jobs, supply chain opportunities and the potential for exports. It will have a UK design authority and a UK chief engineer.”
A spokesman for Airbus said they would not comment while the awarding of the contract was still a live process.