SHIPBUILDING will officially return to Merseyside today after 17 years when the first steel is cut at Cammell Laird for the new aircraft super carrier Queen Elizabeth.

The renowned Birkenhead shipyard has a £44m order to build the carrier’s flight deck and hangars.

The government minister for International Security Strategy, Gerald Howarth MP, will be at Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead this morning to formally start the building of the first of the new Queen Elizabeth class super carriers.

Rear Admiral Philip Jones, assistant chief of the Naval Staff, will represent the Royal Navy, and Geoff Searle, programme director of the Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA), which is running the project, will also attend.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is expected to enter service in late 2015 and her sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales, in 2018, funding permitting.

The carriers will be 65,600 gross tonnes, 932ft (284m) long and carry up to 50 aircraft.

They will replace the Royal Navy’s current three Invincible class aircraft carriers.

The last ship to be completed at Cammell Laird was the nuclear submarine HMS Unicorn in 1993.

The ACA contract for Queen Elizabeth, awarded in late 2009, is to build two modules, designated CB02 and CB04.

These weigh 6,000 tonnes and are two and three decks high.

Once completed, the modules will be loaded onto barges for Rosyth Naval Shipyard, Firth of Forth, Scotland, where Queen Elizabeth’s hull is being built.