§ Mr. Nicholas Wintertonasked the Secretary of State for employment what estimates have been made by his Department, or supplied to his Department, as to the number of redundancies which would be announced by Hawker Siddeley Aviation Limited if neither NATO nor the British Government purchased the Nimrod AEW for the United Kingdom's airborne early warning requirements.
§ Mr. GoldingI am advised that current employment in Hawker Siddeley Aviation Limited on the Nimrod AEW aircraft provides the equivalent of just over 300 full-time jobs. The United Kingdom has decided to proceed with the Nimrod AEW programme. This will provide for a substantially larger number of jobs. If the project had been cancelled the extent to which any job losses would have been reflected in redundancies would have depended in large measure upon the availability of other work.