SNP anger over hundreds of safety events at Faslane

The SNP has reiterated its call for nuclear weapons to be removed from Scotland after the Government was forced to reveal hundreds of recorded nuclear safety events.

Nuclear submarines are based in Faslane. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

SNP MP Deidre Brock has discovered that there have been 789 nuclear safety events at the nuclear bases at Faslane and Coulport since 2006, according to Ministry of Defence figures.

Responses to parliamentary questions tabled by the SNP MP also forced the UK government to reveal that the contract for maintaining the bases and the warheads was now running at more than £1 billion per year.

Deidre Brock MP said: “Not only are we carrying all that risk in Scotland, we also find out that it’s costing us a fortune. £1bn a year to run the bases – that’s about 37,000 times the average annual wage in Scotland and if it was spent in supporting employment it would go a long way to improving the lives of people instead of threatening those lives.”

Bill Kidd MSP, co-president of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, said: “The Government want to not only continue this system, but spend billions more to keep it here for another 30 years.”