Chancellor says cash will create thousands of jobs at home of Trident deterrent and criticises Labour leadership hopeful’s anti-nuclear stance

George Osborne has announced more than £500m of funding for the Royal Navy’s submarine base at Faslane, the home of Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent.

The chancellor said the move would create thousands of jobs, and claimed that a Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn would pose a threat to national security by undermining the future of Trident.

MPs must decide on Trident’s future next year. The Scottish National party, which holds 56 of the country’s 59 seats in Westminster and dominates the Scottish parliament, is opposed to the deployment of nuclear weapons but has committed to retaining a conventional naval presence at the base on the eastern shore of Gare Loch in Argyll and Bute. The party said, however, that the chancellor’s announcement pre-empted the vote.

Faslane, officially known as HM Naval Base Clyde, is one of the three major naval hubs in the UK, alongside Portsmouth and Devonport. Four submarines armed with Trident missiles are based there.

It hosts about 6,700 military and civilian staff and contractors and this is expected to increase to 8,200 by 2022 as more submarines are transferred there. The Treasury said the new investment would create thousands of extra jobs.

The money will fund infrastructure construction – including the building of sea walls and jetties – at Faslane over the next 10 years, with most of the work expected to start in 2017.

In an article for the Sun to coincide with the announcement, Osborne said that a Labour party aligned with the SNP on Trident would threaten the country’s security. He said that Corbyn’s candidacy should not be treated as a joke.

“On the contrary, I think we should take it deadly seriously,” he wrote. “For the new unilateralists of British politics are a threat to our future national security and to our economic security. We’re going to take on their dangerous arguments and defeat them.”

The only breakdown in agreement over the need for a nuclear deterrent was during the 1980s when Labour was dominated by the left, he said.

“Now that consensus, which is so important for our security and reliability as an ally, risks being shattered again by an unholy alliance of Labour’s leftwing insurgents and the Scottish nationalists.”

The SNP’s Westminster defence spokesman, Brendan O’Hara, called for Faslane to be made into a “conventional base” rather than a nuclear hub. “It seems the Treasury apparently has a limitless pot to keep an unwanted and obscene arsenal of nuclear weapons afloat,” O’Hara said.

Osborne was due to visit Faslane on Monday where he was expected to stress the government’s commitment to ensuring the base remained “the centre of UK submarine operations for the next generation”.

He will say: “There will be thousands more jobs right here in Faslane, as well as across the UK supply chain. Across Scotland, around 12,600 people work in defence and my defence spending commitments will secure these jobs and provide huge opportunities for defence, security and technology companies all over the UK.”

Osborne pledged in the summer budget to maintain the Nato commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP annually on defence, a promise that came after considerable pressure internationally and from his own backbenchers.



From 2020, Faslane will be the Royal Navy’s submarine centre of specialisation, which means all of the UK’s submarines will be based there, including HMS Talent and HMS Triumph which are currently based in Plymouth. The navy’s other two T-class submarines, HMS Torbay and HMS Trenchant, are to remain in Devonport until they are decommissioned in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

The Ministry of Defence is expected to base new Successor-class submarines at Faslane when they come into service from 2028.

In May, a navy submariner went on the run after after claiming Britain’s nuclear deterrent was a “disaster waiting to happen”. William McNeilly published a report online detailing 30 alleged safety and security breaches. The 19-page report triggered an immediate investigation by the MoD as police and navy chiefs tried to track down the submariner.

McNeilly claimed to have witnessed “a complete lack of security” while training with the Trident programme. “If airport security and nuclear weapon security were both compared to prisons, the airport would be Alcatraz and base security would be house arrest,” he wrote.

The navy described his dossier as “subjective and unsubstantiated” and its inquiry dismissed his allegations as “factually incorrect or the result of misunderstanding or partial understanding”.