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Farnborough Airshow 2008: UK minister defends 'vital' military exports

By Peter Felstead

7/18/2008

Lord Digby Jones, Minister of State for the UK's Trade and Investment (UKTI) organisation, which now encompasses defence export activities, has told those who oppose UK defence exports to "get real".

Lord Jones said that if the UK stopped sales there would be no impact on worldwide arms orders and UK workers would be put out of jobs.

Ostensibly visiting Farnborough International Airshow to launch a UKTI initiative relating to advanced engineering, Lord Jones nevertheless again went out of his way to argue that UK defence manufacturing and UK defence exports in particular is "absolutely vital".

"The aerospace industry and defence manufacturing is our number one manufacturing industry," said Lord Jones. "We, at this moment, export more defence equipment around the world than any other nation, including America, and about 400,000 people - and therefore if you include their families about a million people - depend on defence manufacturing in Britain." 151 of 392 words

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