§ Mr. David Youngasked the Secretary of State for Defence whether any redundancies are contemplated at Hawker Siddeley Dynamics factory at Lostock in the period 1975 to 1980 as a result of the cancellation of the Sub-Martel project.
§ Mr. William RodgersCancellation of Sub-Martel will have no immediate effect 721W on Lostock and it is expected that the factory will have an expanding guided weapons workload from 1976–77 for the rest of the decade as work on XJ521—the United Kingdom development of a homing head and fuse for the United States Sparrow missile—builds up. Given a reasonable continuation of Hawker Siddeley Dynamics' commercial orders there should therefore be no redundancies in that timescale.
§ Mr. David Youngasked the Secretary of State for Defence what efforts his Department is making to replace the shortfall which will result from the development work lost by the cancellation of the Sub-Martel project.
§ Mr. William RodgersI have held detailed discussions with both the management and trade unions at Hawker Siddeley Dynamics to consider the immediate employment implications of the cancellation of Sub-Martel. As regards the longer term, there are a number of possible future missile requirements which are now being examined but no decisions on these can be taken at the present time.
In order to preserve the company's capability to meet these future requirements, it has already been announced that the company's current air-to-air test vehicle programme is being extended and that Hawker Siddeley Dynamics will act as the British systems contractor for NATO feasibility studies on a second generation anti-ship missile. A contract has also been let for the use of the Sub-Martel discharge test vehicle for use in the general context of submarine torpedo discharge systems. In addition there are a number of items of research which are being discussed with the company.