📋 Tender Overview
Deputy Prime Minister ladies and gentlemen it is fantastic to be here in Barrow which is the crucible of British marine engineering of course and the historic vast maternity ward of these steel leviathans.And when you look at HMS Anson ladies and gentlemen you are looking at the climax of eleven years of high precision effort by 10500 brilliant shipwrights and sonar experts and weapons engineers - a concentration of talent and expertise that can be mustered by only two or three other countries in the world at the most.And on this special day we give them our thanks.And youre looking by the way at a vessel that is five times as long as the chamber of the House of Commons and I think you will agree is an international argument considerably more persuasive than some of the things that are deployed in the chamber.And this is also as the lady sponsor as the wonderful lady sponsor pointed out this is the home the place of work play and rest for one hundred and ten brave submariners at sea week in week out in the service of our country and to them in anticipation I think we should give our thanks.When youre looking at HMS Anson you are also looking at a vast UK industrial project that represents all that we mean or certainly all that I mean by levelling up thats driving jobs and growth and the acquisition of skills up and down the country sonar built in Somerset torpedoes built in Portsmouth propulsion system I think I might even say from Derby Rolls Royce in Derby.And you will know that those Rolls Royce reactors were which are shortly going to be fired up I think for the first time they are the basis of the small modular reactor programme that this government has commissioned as part of our strategy to ensure that the people of this country get reliable supplies from the UK of the energy affordable energy that we need.And Ive just been informed by the by the brilliant people in BAE that these engines run so quietly that the most important feature of this machine is that for all its enormous bulk.
