MoD job cuts unlikely to impact on Gibraltar - Picardo

The Gibraltar Government is confident there will be no compulsory redundancies in the local Ministry of Defence civilian workforce once the current labour agreement expires in 2017, Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said yesterday.

The issue was discussed this week at a meeting in London with the UK Armed Forces Minister Penny Mordaunt, who Mr Picardo described “a good friend of Gibraltar” who understands the Rock’s strategic value.

The meeting comes two months after the British Government published its Strategic Defence and Security review, setting out plans to slash the MoD civilian workforce across its operations globally by nearly a third while boosting defence spending to combat Islamic terrorism.

The Gibraltar Government has already taken on some elements of the local MoD workforce, which was pared down to austere levels when the existing global agreement was negotiated a decade ago.

Against that background - and given the Rock’s role as a military base close to hots spots in north Africa and the Levant – the sense here is that the local workforce is well-placed to escape any major cuts.

“Penny Mordaunt is somebody who is going to fight for jobs in Gibraltar,” Mr Picardo said.

“We’re going into these negotiations confident that there will not be any compulsory redundancies.”

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