Engineering news
Pressure group Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) has welcomed the cuts to the defence budget announced in the government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review and said there is an opportunity to “fundamentally shift” engineering and science in favour of the environmental sector.
Writing in SGR’s winter newsletter, the organisation’s director Stuart Parkinson said that a groundswell of public opinion against war combined with a growing green economy and reductions in military capability could herald major changes to the military and industrial sectors. He said: “There is a realisation that a move to a ‘greener’ economy is overwhelmingly in the country’s best interests. There is still a long way to go, but the changes under way in the military and industrial sectors are major.”
He added: “Scientists and engineers need to work with peace campaigners and others to make these changes go further and become more permanent.”
He argued that changes to the military freed up skilled workers for other areas of the economy. The environmental sector, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, pollution control and recycling, already employed some 880,000 people, whereas the military-industrial sector employed 215,000. Green technology and environmental efficiency sectors were set to grow, Parkinson said. “While there is concern that all the [government] measures currently being proposed or implemented are not enough to meet the UK’s climate change targets, there is nevertheless a widespread belief that these sectors will expand markedly over the next five to ten years and beyond.”
Unions including Prospect, which represents 17,000 defence industry workers, have expressed dismay at the 8% cut to the defence budget, although it was less than the 10% that had been feared. Some 20,000 defence industry jobs are thought to be under threat, as well as a similar number of civil service posts at the Ministry of Defence. BAE Systems cut 1,000 jobs late last year in response to the scrapping of the Harrier fighter jet fleet and Nimrod MRA4. Some have argued that the cuts will make it difficult for the UK to maintain its operations overseas in Afghanistan and in future conflicts.
Tony Edwards, director of the United Kingdom National Defence Association, has said that defence spending as a proportion of GDP is lower than at any point in British history. He has warned that Britain risks dropping into the “second division” of military nations, behind France, Germany, China and even India.