ALARMED MPs are seeking a meeting with the Rolls-Royce management over job-cut fears after seeing workers at Westminster.

They were told that up to 2,000 jobs could be axed across the company despite record order books.

Among those are up to 90 redundancies at the company's Barnoldswick aero engine plant.

Pendle MP Gordon Prentice, who met the workers at the House of Commons yesterday, revealed that a group of MPs was now writing to Rolls boss John Rose on the issue.

He said: "We are very concerned about the possibility of between 1,500 and 2,000 job losses in the company. Like me, the shop stewards find this absolutely inexplicable because the order books have never been better.

"They have orders worth £10.4 billion with another £2 billion worth of contracts to be signed.

"That means work worth £13 billion and yet they are still talking about redundancies under their new programme Better Performance Faster. We have written to Mr Rose asking for a meeting with him and his top management team.

"Rolls have been restructured so that it now has companies within the company. Thus we have the absurdity of skilled workers being made redundant in one part of the firm while people are being recruited in another. There is no provision to seamlessly transfer staff from one part of the company to another."

The delegation from Barnoldswick was led by deputy shop stewards convener Chris Todd.

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