We see this quite often "no UK yards tendered". Fincantieri and Cammell Laird came together in a joint venture with an offer to build the ships at Birkenhead and Peter Luff MP showed his ignorance by claiming "we don't build tankers in the UK" and tell the Fincantieri/Lairds JV to sod off, we are not listening. I wonder if this idiot ever thought who had built all the RFA vessels up to that time? So, the reason no UK yards tendered was because they were told not to as a S. Korean yard was given "preferred bidder" status before the process began.
By the way, when the current defence idiot, Michael Fallon, made the announcement on the BBC on 6th September, he stated "we need to build ships for export. We haven't built a ship for export for 40 years". Really?