York will gain more civil servant jobs through the arrival of the Defence Vetting Agency than it loses through the controversial closure of its army headquarters.

Armed Forces Minister John Spellar has confirmed to York MP Hugh Bayley that 160 staff will be taken on by the DVA through local recruitment in the York area when it moves into offices at Imphal Barracks vacated by the 2nd Division HQ.

That compares with the 131 jobs that the city will lose to Scotland through the re-location of the HQ to Edinburgh, Mr Bayley said today.

Ten York people had already transferred to the DVA from the 2nd Division, he said. "A further 75 staff will be offered DVA contracts by April next year, and another 75 by April 2001."

But 35 members of HQ staff are facing redundancy because the DVA needs a different mix of grades and skills.

At the same time, the DVA is bringing 21 existing jobs with it to York.

Union leaders representing HQ staff at Imphal said that the extra jobs would never have come to York, had it not been for the vigorous campaign against the closure of the HQ.

Mr Bayley said the jobs gain contrasted with what happened when the army's Manning and Records Office at Imphal and the army's REME workshops at Strensall were both closed by the last Conservative Government. In both cases, hundreds of jobs were lost without other jobs moving in to compensate for their disappearance.

He added that York was also gaining many Royal Army Medical Corps jobs, and he was pressing the Ministry of Defence to move even more of this type of work to York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.