Roundtable: Skills and job creation with AUKUS 

At our last AUKUS APPG event, participants discussed how delivering the AUKUS programme requires a bottom-up approach to skills building, anchored by early Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and the provision of national career guidance. 

Although the United Kingdom (UK) holds a structural advantage in nuclear training over its AUKUS partners, capitalising on this requires industry collaboration to manage domestic recruitment pipelines, utilising innovations such as a standardised ‘nuclear passport’ to share talent across prime contractors while empowering local Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to champion these economic opportunities directly with their parliamentary representatives. 

Participants discussed how regional mapping of supply chain demand is urgently required, particularly to help SMEs and the British science sector engage with the less-developed Pillar 2. We were joined by:

• Tara Kilcoyne – AUKUS Desk Officer, FCDO
• Julie Marionneau – Director of International Relations, ADS Group
• Steven Layton – Head of Engineering Operations, Rolls-Royce
• Adam Forgiel-Jenkins – Managing Director, Government Relations, BAE Systems
• Poppy Pow – Head of Government Relations, Babcock