The importance of Airbus to the UK

Branding the current state of Brexit affairs "a disgrace", the chief executive of Airbus, Tom Enders, has warned that the UK aerospace sector “now stands at a precipice”, warning that “If there’s a no-deal Brexit, we at Airbus will have to make potentially very harmful decisions for the UK.” As our infographic shows, it would indeed be very harmful if the French giant were to abandon its UK operations. The company currently employs 14,000 people at 25 sites and according to their own calculations, provided £7.8 billion in gross added value to the economy last year while spending over £6 billion at UK suppliers.

In his video statement yesterday, Enders bemoaned the fact that "more than two years after the result of the 2016 referendum, businesses are still unable to plan properly for the future”. Going further he said: “Please don’t listen to the Brexiteers’ madness which asserts that ‘because we have huge plants here we will not move and we will always be here’. They are wrong” and then warned: “In a global economy, the UK no longer has the capability to go it alone. Major aerospace projects are multinational affairs”.