THE Ministry of Defence (MoD) is having to rethink plans for its Royal Navy general purpose frigate programme after terminating the original process because of a lack of competition.
During the 2016 Holyrood election campaign, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson promised that shipyards in Scotland would benefit from the Type 31e order, but it emerged late last year that BAE systems had signed a deal with Cammell Laird at Birkenhead to “prime, build and assemble” the vessels at its base, rather than here.
And in the 2014 referendum campaign former PM Gordon Brown warned that independence would threaten the future of the Rosyth dockyard, saying jobs at the shipyard depended on Scotland remaining part of the UK.
Now the whole programme is in doubt.
SNP defence spokesperson Stewart McDonald said reports of its suspension were “utterly shocking” and, coming on the last day of parliament before recess, were “deeply cynical even for this untrustworthy government”.
He said reports suggested the programme for the next generation of RN frigates had to be suspended and delayed on the grounds of cost.
It followed a series of cutbacks as the MoD struggled with a massive budget “black hole”, falling numbers of service personnel and a continuing “obsession” with squeezing the conventional defence budget to pay for Trident renewal.
“Suspending this vital programme on the very last day of parliament is the kind of thing we have grown to expect from this deeply cynical untrustworthy government – but it is still utterly shocking,” said McDonald.
“The Ministry of Defence has been unable to answer the most basic questions about the cost of this new Type 31e frigates and today they have had to own up to their own chaotic failures.
“This has deeply serious consequences for our naval defence capabilities and the future of the shipbuilding across the UK .
“The MoD now has questions to answer about the disarray of their naval capabilities.
“How small will the Royal Navy fleet be and for how long will it be depleted? Are the UK Government going to stick to their budget of £250 million per vessel – if not how much? And will they now have to invest in extending the life of the Type 23 frigates?
“This is an utter mess and the Tories only have themselves to blame.”
The MoD said in a statement: “Making this decision now and starting a new procurement is the right thing to do to deliver the best outcome. We will present plans for a new streamlined procedure imminently.”
The first ship was expected to be delivered by 2023 – a tight deadline which it appears to believe is still possible, despite this setback.
“There have been no changes in our plans to procure a first batch of five new Type 31e frigates to grow our Royal Navy,” the statement continued.
“We still want the first ship delivered by 2023 and are confident that industry will meet the challenge of providing them for the price tag we’ve set.”
However, McDonald added: "Time after time the Tories make claims about shipbuilding being safe in their hands only for the workforces to be hammered by U-turns, lies and broken promises.
“Today’s reports will be just another hammer blow from the Tories who think they can do anything to Scotland and get away with it.
“The Scottish Tories need to wake up to the threats to our shipbuilding industry from their own incompetent government and stop dismissing SNP concerns as ‘scaremongering’ as they do every time I raise them in parliament.
“This is proof that yet again on the last day of parliament that the Tories cannot and must never be trusted on shipbuilding.”
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