Article: In Depth - AUKUS
AUKUS
Article written for In Depth, the Official Newsletter of the Submariners Association.
Issue 83, January 2024
The rationale for the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is a simple one: it adds resilience to what is the relatively fragile business of submarine manufacture; it enables and supports a tilt towards the Pacific for Britain and the US while bolstering Australia, and it offers a force multiplier on emerging military technologies such as hypersonics, AI, cyber and quantum.
It also, for Barrow & Furness, the constituency I have been fortunate to represent since 2019, presents both opportunities and risks.
The opportunities are obvious and were heralded when the announcement of AUKUS was made in September 2021. Pillar 1 of the programme - submarine manufacture - is leading, alongside the requirements of the Dreadnought programme, to an increase of 7,000 jobs in Barrow and a significant increase in defence spending.
The steady drumbeat of work in the submarine programme as the shipyard closes on delivery of the final two Astute boats, continues Dreadnought, and now pivots to SSN-AUKUS, has marked a turnaround in outlook and activism by BAE in Furness.
After a period of introspection, there is now a very clear direction at BAE from the top down that the quality of the work in the shipyard rises and falls with the fortunes of the town. The shipyard now sponsors schools, sports teams, and local charities. And in a move that symbolises its new outlook perhaps more than anything else, is creating its new training facility in Barrow’s struggling town centre.
Gone - or going - is the fortress mentality where you are either in or out, and employee or not, and in has swept a view that the shipyard is the town, and the town is the shipyard.
Of course, the two are intrinsically linked - indeed, Barrow’s beating heart since it was formed some 180 years ago has always been its industrial base. From the export of iron ore, to the production of steel, railways, and latterly shipbuilding, Barrow’s growth comes from that industry - its population growing from 143 people to over 47,000 in under 40 years.
That initial growth saw the creation of much of the iconic civic centre of Barrow that we know today - the long boulevard of Abbey Road, the public baths, schools, town hall, civic buildings, and the company housing on Barrow Island - built at breakneck pace through the paternalistic tendencies of the captains of industry who profited from the labours of this new town’s citizens. Many of those buildings are still in place and are much loved.
The new era of prosperity that Barrow is leaning into offers a similar opportunity for civic renewal. As the local MP I have been pestering anyone who would listen for much of the last three-and-a-bit years, and plenty who didn’t want to, that Furness was badly in need of an industrial strategy to support the submarine programme.
My logic went thus: Dreadnought (this was pre-AUKUS) will result in thousands more jobs being created; Barrow does not have the homes to support that influx; if those homes were to be created and each were to have two cars, our roads would become a car park; we have neither enough school nor hospital and GP capacity for numbers of that scale; significantly increasing the size of the shipyard will require moving considerable amounts of freight on those same roads so we need to electrify our railways... and looming on the horizon is the very real (likely, I believe) chance that we will soon see new nuclear at Sellafield. Should this happen, we will face those same challenges and pressures only a few miles away, making delivery of the national endeavour even harder.
Essentially, if the Government wants us to be able to maintain CASD, and build good products to time, and to budget, then it needs to roll the pitch so that Furness is in a position to deliver, rather than attempting to do so with one arm tried behind its back.
Just as I felt I was gaining traction with the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary, the AUKUS partnership was announced. With that announcement, the pressures I mentioned above increased several fold. Dreadnought is a national endeavour. SSN-AUKUS is an international one that we cannot allow to fail. As a result, Team Barrow was born.
Launched at the behest of the Prime Minister and led by the Cabinet Secretary (the most senior civil servant in the country), Team Barrow brings together some of the most senior civil servants from across Government, the local council, BAE (and me!) to plot what needs to be delivered and who will be accountable for doing so to deliver on these two huge projects.
Nowhere else in the UK has this kind of attention - and it is a huge opportunity for Furness that we do. As ever, the devil will be in the details, but I am in the fortunate position to prod, jostle and nudge Ministers between meetings and, so far, things are progressing well.
In Parliament I co-chair the AUKUS All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). APPGs are essentially coalitions of the interested and must be cross-party to exist. John Spellar (a former Labour defence Minister) and I are building up a group that currently consists of the MPs of Devonport, Barrow, and Derby, and a few significant interested others, to include those who have major supply chain or skills interests. Our job is to educate parliamentarians on the task ahead of us, to improve our challenge, ensure a deep knowledge regardless of what happens in upcoming elections, and to build links with our counterparts in the US and Australia.
AUKUS, of course, is not just about boats, but a long-lasting tilt towards the pacific and the deep integration of the defence and intelligence infrastructure of three nations. Pillar 1 is of huge interest to Barrow, Devonport and Derby, but it is Pillar 2 where some of the longest-lasting impacts will be felt. As an APPG, we need to understand this, challenge it, and ensure that we are holding the executive to account, and providing a degree of stability in a three-way relationship buffeted by challenging electoral cycles.
As part of this, in Westminster I spend a good deal of my time meeting defence companies, ministers and government officials, technology firms, educational establishments, and a plethora of think tanks, to gain knowledge and to begin to draw together a coalition of interested parties. It is early days but we are making good progress. For a project that will last decades in delivery and run far longer in operation, it is essential that we understand the scale of opportunity, and the risks inherent in AUKUS.
Which neatly brings me to my current assessment. In late October I visited Washington DC to discuss aid, diplomacy, migration, and defence with Congressmen, Senators, and the US civil service. Earlier in the year I was in New York with the Home Affairs Committee to explore issues pertaining to policing and law enforcement.
In both cases I left with a very clear view: the special relationship, as we like to call it, now has a third partner. This is no bad thing, and we should embrace the opportunities that come with it.
The other message I left with is that our friends and partners in the US are firmly of the view that after a Cold War dividend which we all enjoyed, we are now in a space dominated by conflict and competition - a rising China that seeks to expand its influence territorially, technologically, and through trade; a destructive Russia; instability in the Middle East; overarching issues that transcend borders like climate change, pandemics and migration; and technological advancements which will impact the daily lives and work of citizens as well as democratic systems and warfare.
Geopolitical volatility that may seem far away threatens our national security, prosperity, and way of life at home. New alliances such as AUKUS and GCAP (the new air platform shared between the UK, Japan and Italy) enable us to far more aggressively lean into those threats and make the structural changes in our defence and foreign policy establishments required to do so.
Australia, the US and the UK are old friends, bound by their liberal democracies, shared language, values and cultures. But we are also starting out on a new relationship, and so these early months and years are delicate and fragile.
The work being undertaken in Barrow through AUKUS should serve not only to make us all a bit more secure, but also to provide resilience to a fragile submarine programme, cement trust amongst partners that the other strands of the partnership will reap rewards, and enable a transformation for the wider community in Barrow & Furness. It is a bold, innovative programme, and one that rises up to the unprecedented challenges that we face in the world today.
