Carriers of good news for the Clyde and Rosyth

TRADITIONALLY, champagne is only used to celebrate the launch of a new ship.

But yesterday, the celebrations in dockyards across the UK - and in Scotland in particular - were for the announcement that in nearly a decade's time, two new vessels will eventually set sail. After years of dithering and delay, the government has finally confirmed that it will order two new aircraft carriers to replace the Royal Navy's ageing carriers. Costing £3.5 billion and weighing 65,000 tonnes, they will be the biggest military vessels Britain has ever built.

So large and complex is the job of building the ships that no single shipyard can carry it out, so each of the huge hulls - which, at 56 metres high, will be taller than Nelson's Column - will be built in four massive sections, each weighing as much as 12,000 tonnes.

Confirming Scotland's important place in naval shipbuilding, two of the four sections in each will be built north of the Border. The Babcock yard at Rosyth will build the sterns and the BAE yard on the Clyde will make the bow sections - the new ships will be nose-and-tail Scottish. Yards at Portsmouth, Hampshire, and Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, will get the remaining work on the middle sections.

Each piece of work is likely to secure 1,000 jobs at each yard for at least a decade. Supporting work and second-tier contracts for the vast ships' superstructure and internal systems will probably secure thousands more posts.

And while it was not confirmed yesterday, it is likely that the final job of joining the hull sections will go to Rosyth, meaning the great ships will eventually be launched from the Fife shore.

Perhaps the only minor disappointment for Scotland in yesterday's announcement was the confirmation that the new carriers will sail from Portsmouth, not Faslane on the Clyde. After intense lobbying by Labour MPs, a Ministry of Defence review of navy bases decided against closing Portsmouth and basing the carriers in Scotland, although officials admitted yesterday that the option had been "very seriously considered".

Still, that decision could not dampen the celebrations that greeted yesterday's news in Scotland. Des Browne, who is both Defence Secretary and Scottish Secretary, said: "I am sure this will be warmly welcomed by all those working in both the Scottish and wider UK naval shipbuilding industry whose livelihood will be safeguarded by these contracts."

Jack Dromey, deputy general-secretary of the T&G section of the Unite trade union, said: "This is good news for Rosyth and the many other yards and businesses in manufacturing which will benefit."

Fife Chamber welcomed the "great news", and John Park, a former Rosyth dockyard worker now a Labour MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, hailed "a fantastic economic boost for the local area, the yards on the Clyde and across Scotland".

Nicola Sturgeon, the deputy first minister and the SNP MSP for Govan, said: "This is great news for Govan and great news for the people employed at the yard. The yard has a bright future and this order goes a long way to confirming that shipbuilding will continue on the Clyde."

The news safeguards the future of all four yards.

Tim Ripley, defence analyst at the Centre of Defence and International Security Studies, said the technology was well-tested: "

There is lots of industrial politics involved to give work to different places.

"In terms of industrial technology there have been changes in the way ships are made. New designs mean that you don't have to build them all in the one place. This is a tried-and-tested method and has been used to build Type 45 destroyers. The work at each yard will be up to the same standard. It also means you can do the work a bit quicker, but it may actually cost more because four workforces are carrying out the work. There is always the risk that some mishap may occur when one section is being towed to another yard, but this is a remote risk."

Yet for all the jubilation, yesterday's announcement also raised significant questions: questions about the carriers, the Royal Navy and British defence policy as a whole.

For one thing, yesterday's announcement was about four years late. The MoD wanted to confirm the carrier project as early as 2003, but a succession of internal Whitehall squabbles over money and wrangling with the defence firms supposed to build the ships has repeatedly delayed the "main gate" decision.

Despite repeatedly insisting that the final delivery of the carriers would not be affected, the MoD yesterday admitted that HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince Charles will not enter service until 2014 and 2016 respectively. Originally, the ships had been timetabled to start work in 2012 and 2015.

To avoid a "capability gap" - a situation in which the UK has no functioning aircraft carriers - the navy will now be forced to delay the retirement of the existing aircraft carriers, HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious. Both are already showing signs of age and will be over 30 by the time they are replaced.

Then there is the question of just what will be on the new carriers when they finally set sail. The government's plan is for each of the ships to carry 40 Joint Strike Fighters, US-made warplanes intended to succeed the ageing Harriers now in service.

The cost of buying 150 of the supersonic stealth fighters is likely to dwarf even the carrier contract - at least £10 billion and possibly much more. Already, the US-led JSF development project is reporting delays and cost overruns, hold-ups that could have serious consequences for the carriers.

Yesterday, one senior navy figure closely involved in the UK carrier project admitted it was "quite possible" that the new vessels will enter service without the aircraft they are designed to carry.

"At the moment, it is not possible to say when JSF will be ready," said the officer.

Nor can insiders be completely sure about how many fighters will be bought in the end. The carriers may be confirmed, but several other multi-billion-pound defence procurement projects remain in limbo, and analysts wonder what price the MoD will eventually have to pay for the carriers.

In particular, defence insiders are worried about the programme to build new Type 45 destroyers, smaller vessels that will guard and accompany the huge carriers around the world. The MoD wants eight new destroyers, but has so far ordered only six. The remaining two vessels are still part of the department's "planning assumptions", but it remains unclear whether the money to order them will be found in the wider defence budget.

That wider budget is the subject of intense political scrutiny and there was widespread suspicion yesterday that Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, used the carrier announcement as cover for a less-than-generous overall spending settlement for the MoD.

Pre-empting the comprehensive spending review in October, the government yesterday brought forward the announcement of the MoD's spending allocation.

The department gamely tried to present its settlement - a 1.5 per cent rise in real terms - as a victory. But with overall government spending set to rise by 2.5 per cent over the next three-year period, the consequence will be that "defence spending as a share of public expenditure will fall slightly", according to a senior MoD official.