SOUTHAMPTON has been given the grim Christmas present everyone dreaded as shipbuilder Vosper Thornycroft announced it would be making up to 650 of its workers redundant.

As families across the city prepared for Christmas, the devastating news was broken to the employees who had made the Woolston shipyard world-famous, that hundreds of jobs had to go.

Eastleigh's Liberal Democrat MP, David Chidgey, who has many VT families in his constituency, said: "The government has forced this action on the company. I hope ministers involved have a happy Christmas as there are hundreds of people in Eastleigh and Southampton who won't.''

There was also gloom in Portsmouth where just weeks ago the city was gloating over the fact that VT shipbuilding was likely to move from Southampton into the naval dockyard. Portsmouth MPs and civic leaders said that VT had been "stabbed in the back'' over how the government had placed the contract.

Staff have been living under the cloud of redundancy since last October but yesterday an angry VT chief executive Martin Jay blamed further delays in the contract to build the UK's next generation of warship for the decision to axe jobs.

The situation was brought to a head on Wednesday when the government placed the Type 45 destroyer demonstration and first of class manufacturer contract (DFM) with BAE Systems.

For more on this story see pages 6 and 7 of the Daily Echo