BURNLEY Council is to ask the town’s Tory MP Antony Higginbotham to urge the government to act to save jobs in the aerospace industry in the wake of the announcement of job losses at Rolls-Royce’s Barnoldswick factories.
It will urge him to call for a ban on ‘the offshoring of manufacturing processes that are of strategic national importance to the United Kingdom’.
The motion to the council, moved by retired aerospace worker Cllr Frank Cant, was approved despite a row over the impact of such a prohibition on local businesses.
Liberal Democrat councillor Gordon Lishman said the UK ban on moving work offshore would lead to a ‘tit for tat’ trade war which would deter international companies such as Safran from investing in the town.
The motion passed by the meeting said: “We are aware that the aerospace industry forms a backbone of highly-skilled jobs in Burnley.
“Council notes with dismay the announcement by Rolls-Royce."
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