BOMBARDIER'S decision to axe 490 jobs at its site in Belfast is regrettable but "is not a Brexit issue", British business minister Richard Harrington told the Commons.
More than a tenth of core staff at the Queen's Island plant face redundancy under cost-cutting plans aimed at improving the Canadian-headquartered firm's long-term competitiveness.
Mr Harrington said: "This is unwelcome news for the Belfast workforce and their families. It's regrettable that they face further uncertainty at this time of year, but Bombardier is a private company and the government has no role in its commercial decisions."
He also revealed that he had been assured by the firm's president Michael Ryan that Brexit had not played a role in the decision.
But shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner warned that there would be "significant implications" for the whole of the UK if the firm continued to downsize operations.
He said: "Bombardier's presence in Northern Ireland is vital to the economy there, representing 8 per cent of its GDP and about 40 per cent of the province's manufacturing output.
"The company employs about 4,000 people across Northern Ireland as a whole, so this announcement will be a devastating blow not only to the 490 families who will be directly affected by it in the run up to Christmas but there are an estimated 20,000 jobs throughout the UK supply chain.
"This matter is therefore of national public policy importance, for the minister to say the government has no role here is simply unacceptable."
He added: "These job losses are just the latest in a long line of redundancies at Bombardier, over 1,700 since May of 2015. Such huge cuts to the workforce so highly concentrated in one area will have devastating consequences to entire communities."
On Wednesday the aerospace giant, which is the north's biggest high-tech manufacturer, comfirmed the latest swathe of redundancies after reviewing its manpower requirements in Belfast.
It came despite Bombardier saying in February that it is "moving into a strong growth cycle" as it revealed earnings before interest and tax for the whole of 2017 of $672m (more than £500m), admittedly driven by rising sales and profits in its rail division.
Unions insist the cuts are "unjustified" in the face of rising profits, and say they will fight tooth and nail to save as many of the positions as possible.
Most of Bombardier's Belfast-based employees are involved in wing-making, mainly for the A220 aircraft (previously known as the CSeries.
