A CROSS-party group of MPs is trying to speed up the removal of the UK’s nuclear legacy from submarines at Rosyth and Devonport.
Douglas Chapman, SNP member for Dunfermline and West Fife – which includes the Rosyth dockyard – has joined forces with Devonport’s Labour MP, Luke Pollard and Anne Marie Trevelyan, the Tory member for Berwick-upon-Tweed. They have already taken their campaign to the UK Government in a meeting with Treasury Minister, Liz Truss.
More than 20 decommissioned subs are berthed at Devonport and Rosyth and the commitment to dispose of them is nearly four decades old. Around £500 million has been spent storing and maintaining them, but nine are still to have their fuel rods removed, and estimates suggest that is unlikely to happen before 2023 – more than a decade later than planned.
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After meeting Truss and her officials, Chapman said: “I am very pleased that we are trying to make progress on this issue which affects my constituents and Scotland more widely, and we are approaching it in a logical and business-like manner and working on it cross-party – which is often what citizens ask politicians to do.
“The [National Audit Office] NAO report on the UK’s redundant nuclear subs was absolutely damning and we found out, for example, that many of these subs have been sitting idle in water for a longer period than they were in active service for the Royal Navy, and in the UK we have more redundant submarines than we have operational submarines as part of the fleet.
“Over the past six months we have met jointly with the Defence Minister, Stuart Andrew, and his predecessor Guto Bebb, his MoD officials and UK Government ministers from the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department, who have responsibility for civil nuclear clear-up and decommissioning.
“Our argument is that all nuclear clear-up costs should come from the one budget and not, in this case, from the MoD where budgets are already at breaking point.”
He added: “I really want to get to the stage when we have no old, nuclear powered submarines in Scotland, and once all seven have been dismantled and all the low level and intermediate level waste is safely removed, then they have gone, and gone for good.”
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