Robin Southwell, CEO of Airbus UK, in a speech to Labour’s Annual Conference in Manchester, said:
Conference, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to have been invited to speak to you on this most important of issues. But before I begin, can I say how delighted I am, as a citizen of our United Kingdom, that Scotland has decided that they are indeed “better together” as an integral part of our family of nations.
What I would like to do first is to furnish a few salient features that underpin the successful operations of Airbus Group and support some 17,000 highly skilled jobs across the UK and ten times more in the wider supply chain.
This is not a political message in any way. I’m not here to talk politics but I hope to inform politics.
I have been asked, as a businessman, to reflect upon what the UK’s membership of the European Union actually means, at least from our perspective.
Airbus Group operates in a strictly regulated, brutally competitive global market place where the expertise, experience and capabilities we have painstakingly developed over 75 years right here, in fact only 50 miles away down the M56 at Broughton, is genuinely the envy of the aerospace world.
Notwithstanding our flourishing in this toughest of environments, we are not and indeed could not be just a bona fide UK success story.
Born out of industrial consolidation in the 1970s with the objective then, and indeed now, to take on the might of American’s aerospace industry, we are an iconic vision of what Europe can achieve industrially and we have demonstrated time and again that we’ve got what it takes to engineer and produce world-beating products. And an awful lot of that success is down to what we do here and now in the UK:
• We like to think we have the Airbus crown jewels here in UK. We design and build the wings from the biggest factory to be constructed in the UK for over a quarter of a century. And as our excellent Unite union comrades remind us: “Without those wings, it’s just a ruddy bus”
• We are the UK’s largest commercial aerospace company and largest aerospace exporter, and not to forget the largest space and satellite company. Indeed every TV in this conference and across the country receives its signal beamed from one of our satellites.
• With the A400M Atlas about to enter service and join the already successful Voyager fleet, and noting our role in the Eurofighter consortium, we are the largest provider of aircraft to the RAF, as well as the number one supplier of helicopters to our emergency services.
All this is supported by a long-term strategy, involving the investment of over half a billion pounds in the UK annually in skills and Research and Development. We collaborate with 20 universities across the UK and also have over 100 apprentices start each year, with over 4,000 apprenticeships successfully completed in the past decade.
So what are the conditions and environment that have provided the underpinnings for this success? Well, there are some clear points that I want to make to you this morning:
A belief in free trade is in our DNA, with the economic benefits which manifestly flow therefrom.
We do not believe that Airbus Group would have achieved what it has in the UK to date without this country being an integral part of the EU. Our operations here simply could not have grown to the scale and breadth that we enjoy today if we were unable to enjoy the unfettered movement of people, capital, resource and technology that the present arrangement provides.
The world today is one of major trading blocks, and the EU is the largest of those. The UK rightly views itself as in the premier league of trading nations, but if you aren’t in a premier trading block then how can you expect to compete in the game? Who would properly listen to us in vital forums such as the World Trade Organisation if we are simply shouting from the terraces?
We are rightly proud of the advanced wings that are designed and made here in the UK. We think that those wings make a material difference to the competitiveness of our Airbus aircraft. But customers don’t buy our British wings, they buy European Airbus aircraft with British wings. 95 per cent of our wings built here are destined for overseas markets, so fair access and effective integration with those key markets is not just essential, but in fact a precondition for that success.
These are serious messages at a serious time, but they do need to be stated. It may be at times a difficult and emotional topic to discuss but we want to stand up for what we have achieved, as we are proud both of our successes in the UK and of the vital partnership that our unique history of European cooperation brings.
In summary, we welcome this debate and look forward to playing our full part in such discussions throughout this conference season and beyond. I think that politicians of any persuasion can and should be proud of what has been achieved by Airbus as a group, and yes by Airbus here in our United Kingdom, and with your continuing support we can continue on this flight path. Thank you.
Ends