§ Sir G. Nabarroasked the Minister of State for Defence whether, in view of his proposal to carry out at Farnborough all work hitherto undertaken at Pershore, he will make a statement on the available air space over and around Farnborough; what steps he is taking in response to the representations of the RRE Pershore Staff and Trade Unions Joint Council about consequent redundancies; and what is his revised figure of redundancies now anticipated.
§ Mr. Ian GilmourAs my hon. Friend will know from my letter of 7th September, some of the flying which it was intended to move from Pershore to Farnborough will now in fact go to Bedford. The increase in flying at Farnborough will therefore be even less than was expected. However, the question of available air space around Farnborough is primarily a matter for my hon. Friend the Minister of Aerospace and Shipping.
Staff who will be affected by the moves are being approached individually about their future and because the eventual number of redundancies will depend on the exercise of personal choice I am not yet able to give the likely total. As I said in my letter of 27th November, the number of non-mobile posts that will be created in the Malvern area will exceed the number of posts moved out, thus offering job opportunities to many of those who would otherwise be declared redundant.