BEING locked out of a new EU €500 million defence fund after Brexit could destroy Scotland’s shipbuilding industry, a union has said.
Brussels is set to shut out British companies from participation in the scheme to help member states spend taxpayer money more efficiently.
An EU source has reportedly said that the European Commission agreed to impose “strict conditions” on non-EU companies that wanted to participate in projects financed by the fund, which will be set up next year, and GMB organiser Gary Cook said that exclusion from the defence fund could be the death knell of Scotland’s shipyards.
He said: "Defence manufacturing is vital to UK and Scottish manufacturing.
"Because of Brexit it looks certain that UK companies will be locked out of the defence fund.
"This has the potential to seriously hobble UK companies and it could cause real problems for the long term future of shipbuilding and the development of complex warships.
"The work building the support ships could and should support thousands of jobs in Scotland and across the UK.
"Shipbuilders and workers across defence need to know what the government is going to do to protect our defence manufacturing industries."
The GMB union has already warned that workers at Rosyth dockyard face "an ever more threatening future", and claim that Rosyth dock workers face not getting a share of a £1 billion shipbuilding contract.
The Ministry of Defence has put an order to build Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ships out to international tender, but the union says that hundreds of jobs have already been lost at Rosyth.
In response, an MoD spokesman said: “The UK wants to agree an ambitious future relationship with the EU and we are committed to working together amid a climate of intensifying threats.
“With the largest defence budget in Europe, and all of our warships being built in the United Kingdom, securing thousands of jobs and 20 years of work on the Clyde, we are witnessing a renaissance in national shipbuilding.
"Since 2010 this Government has invested more than £6bn in shipbuilding in the UK, securing thousands of jobs. While in 2018-19 we expect to spend in excess of £750m supporting the fleet.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel