Letter: Carrier benefits

Further to Bruce Skivington's plea (Letters, 23 October) for full publication of the details of the aircraft carrier contract, what I would like to know is just how much of the £5.9 billion cost of these ships will actually be spent in Scotland?

The Unionist parties make a great play of how Scotland benefits from such defence contracts as a part of the UK, and how grateful the shipyard workers on the Clyde and Rosyth should be to be benefiting from this Westminster expenditure. I would not be surprised if it turned out that whatever is spent in Scotland on these ships is not much more than Scotland's own proportional contribution to the UK defence budget.

The decision to go ahead with the building of these two ships will undoubtedly be a great boon to tens of thousands of workers outside Scotland, something that the Unionist parties in Scotland are very quiet about.

NICK DEKKER

Nairn Way

Cumbernauld