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Defence Industry (Lancashire)

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise issues relating to the defence industry in Lancashire. Lancashire is probably at the heart of the UK's defence industry, although when I first moved to Preston in 1975, I did not realise how important the industry there was. At the time, British Aerospace, as it then was, ran three major aerospace factories in the Preston area. One was at Warton, to the west of Preston, one was Salmesbury, to the east of Preston, and one was at the old Strand Road site, right in the centre of the city. Strand Road had a long history of aerospace production, going back generations and through the second world war. We have a long tradition of producing a variety of aircraft, from the Hampden, the Canberra and the Lightning right up to the Tornado and the Typhoon in the present day. Lancashire's defence industry at the time was based around those three major factories, together with two Royal Ordnance factories—one in Blackburn and one between Chorley and Leyland. What always interested me about the Royal Ordnance factory at Chorley was that the Ordnance Survey map would show nothing at the site apart from trees and a bit of green. However, anyone who went on the railway line would stop at a special station, which allowed thousands of ROF workers to get off the train to go to work in the huge factories spread over hundreds of acres between Leyland and Chorley. A third of the site is now in my constituency and two thirds is in the Chorley constituency. The ROF has now virtually gone, and there is a new village called Buckshaw. The railway station will shortly come back into use as a commuter station, and thousands of houses and factories are being built on the site. The old ROF site at Blackburn also closed many years ago. None the less, the defence industry remains crucial to Lancashire. It is based around the Salmesbury and Warton plants, but there are also a large number of small supply companies. In the early '90s, when the Tornado was in full production, I attended an unveiling ceremony in Warton for what was probably not quite a prototype—it would be a bit grand to talk about it as such—but a model for what became the Eurofighter Typhoon. Many years later, the Typhoon is coming off the production line. I was pleased when my hon. Friend the Minister signed the contract for tranche 3A of the Typhoon, which has secured many jobs in my area. There are 112 aircraft in tranche 3A, and we need to see whether we can get tranche 3B. Those of us in the area are still working on that. The Tornado was probably the last major fighter to be a UK-only plane. The Typhoon was a joint production with Germany, Spain and Italy and it has been very successful.