Cuts in UK defence spending will stall economic recovery and damage our national security. These are the warnings at the heart of two reports published this week by trade body The Defence Industry Council.
The reports, launched amidst fears that following the next election defence spending will face significant cuts looks at both the support industry gives to the armed forces and the contribution the industry makes to the UK economy.
Speaking at the launch of the documents yesterday in London, DIC Chairman Mike Turner – who is also Chairman of Babcock international – claimed that increased government investment in the defence industry is essential for the future security and prosperity of the UK.
While critics might argue that that Britain’s recent military activities have done little to enhance global or national security, the importance of the industry to the domestic economy and engineers in general is plain to see.
The sector currently employs 300,000 people in the UK, supplies 10 per cent of all manufacturing jobs in the UK and earns £5bn in export sales each year and carries out research and stimulates growth in a host of other sectors.
Indeed, according to the report, 1.6 new jobs are created elsewhere in the economy for every new job created in the defence industry.
But defence isn’t the only sector of industry that could and should play a major role in a rebalanced economy. Indeed, the calls for greater, not less, government spending are just as compelling when they are made by other areas of our manufacturing industry.
For instance, energy and transport infrastructure might be equally important creators of jobs and certainly of no less importance to the future security and prosperity of the UK.
Jon Excell, Deputy Editor
Why is it called the defence industry? It could equally be called the death, destruction and oppressive equipment industry.
I’m sure the great minds working in this industry and the large sums of money could be more usefully employed doing something more constructive for the planet.
We want to maximise our defensive abilities and our manufacturing jobs. Eliminate the expensive Trident programme and concentrate on UK-built, more useful equipment that has both military and emergency humanitarian aid capabilities. What greater pride can a country have than seeing its mighty force coming to the aid of some disaster area, helping, soothing; yet visibly showing its defensive capabilities?
Defence is about maintaining our freedoms. Actually, we have lost more freedoms to the EU than many a lost military conflict might have done. So a further cost saving, freely increasing our hard earned freedoms, could be to limit European ties to trade and travel.
With these enormous savings, concentrate on UK-designed and built equipment, suitable for defence, civil unrest and humanitarian aid.
A further security to the UK would be if firms like Babcock International resumed building UK power stations and other infrastructure instead of in the rest of the world.
At the end of the 1980’s slash and burn of the national technology base, I recall an article stating we had only retained nuclear engineering and defence as coherent areas of technological expertise.
Having now successfully eliminated the nuclear industry to feed the interests of fossil fuel providers and the green lobby we now need to destroy the “defence industry”, as once that’s gone we can return to idyllic feudalism under the benign rule of the new elites.
Rob is on the right track. The money wasted on rubbish defence equipment – ships blasted out of the water by Exocets in the Falklands, helicopters crashing out of the blue and getting lost in fog on the Mull of Kintyre, submarines bumping into each other in Mid-Atlantic – could certainly be better spent to avoid the high profile British industry failings which the MoD revels in. On the other hand perhaps it is better to keep the numbskulls where they are to protect the British public from more widespread failings and ridicule.