SELECT COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AFFAIRS - Parliament

Mr Paul Ingram and Professor Iain McLean—Oral evidence (QQ 430–481)
are Scottish service personnel. If we simply look at the number of bases and the number of
Scottish personnel who are deployed in Scotland, it is roughly equal to the rest of the United
Kingdom.
Q438 The Chairman: I do not know whether you saw Francis Tusa’s evidence to the
Scottish Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons in May. One of the arguments
has been that Trident could not be moved from Scotland very easily and that the cost of
such a move would be very high. I think that at one point he described it as “one of the
biggest red herrings”. He was arguing that they could very easily be deployed elsewhere in
the United Kingdom. Have you any view on that?
Paul Ingram: It is certainly not what the Minister for the Armed Services said a few weeks
back in evidence. It is the opinion of many analysts within my community that there are
significant problems with relocation, and not just the actual porting of the submarines, which
is manageable—obviously submarines already go into Devonport for refits and the like. The
principal challenge is the location of the armouries for the nuclear warheads, along with the
inevitable public inquiries, the political impact and the geological basis, which implies health
and safety. At the moment, at Coulport there are of the order of 2,000 to 3,000 residents
who would be at risk if there were an accidental nuclear explosion. If we were to base
nuclear weapons in Devonport, you could look at a factor much larger than that, with local
impacts when it came to the political fear of having these stationed, and that would create all
sorts of challenges. There is certainly a financial cost when it comes to upgrading the bases
elsewhere to take these weapons. Nick Harvey, the junior Minister, has given an estimate of
the order of tens of billions of pounds. He has not gone into that. He did not have any Civil
Service back-up for that number but he based that estimate on the fact that they have
already spent, in recent times, £3.5 billion to upgrade the Faslane facilities to take the
Vanguard and Astute class submarines. So one could assume that building facilities from
scratch would cost a great deal more than the £3.5 billion that has already been spent.
Therefore, there are financial costs but there also are a number of other significant costs
that would make it difficult.
Q439 Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: Just on the Francis Tusa point, I do not know
whether you read the evidence that he gave to the Scottish Affairs Select Committee.
Paul Ingram: No, I did not.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: On the point about the storage of the warheads and the
issues which you say have been raised by the Defence Minister among others, he said, “It is
very easy. Aldermaston and Burghfield have spare storage capability and have full nuclear
licences. Coulport is sized for a deterrent with five”, and then he was interrupted. He was
implying that there were no difficulties at all.
Paul Ingram: If one were to store the warheads at Aldermaston and Burghfield, which
would indeed be a rational thing to do, you would still need to have the loading facilities.
You obviously cannot load a submarine at Aldermaston or Burghfield, and you would need
some temporary storage facilities because you could not do this sort of activity on an offthe-shelf,
immediate basis. It would not satisfy health and safety procedures.
Q440 Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: For someone who operates on soundbites, in your
view what would the cost of moving the nuclear deterrent out of Scotland be, and how
many jobs would be lost as a result?
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