THE Veterans Minister at Holyrood claims the loss of defence personnel in Scotland has been "drastic and disproportionate" with a devastating impact on the services community.
Keith Brown claims he was snubbed by Armed Forces Minister Andrew Robathan who visited RAF Leuchars last week, after requests for meetings.
With the latest figures due on Wednesday, Mr Brown predicts "worrying reading – not only for our military and civilian MoD personnel based here in Scotland, but also for their families, friends, and the wider communities in which they live".
Mr Brown told The Herald: "As well as cuts to basing and conventional capabilities, recent years have seen the MoD impose drastic and disproportionate cuts to the number of service and civilian MoD personnel based in Scotland – more than 7000 jobs have been lost in Scotland since 2000, with total numbers dwindling from 24,680 to just 17,620 last year.
"Not only has this had a major impact on our economy, it has also had a devastating impact on our servicemen, servicewomen and their families."
He said the MoD pledged to clarify the outcome of the Defence Transformation Programme by the end of the year but it now looked unlikely to achieve this deadline, especially in relation to the fate of Leuchars after the RAF's withdrawal.
Mr Brown said: "Since July last year, we have been urging the UK Government to end the uncertainty and provide the clarity that our communities need. Scottish Government ministers have had three separate meetings with their UK counterparts and written on 13 occasions but we still lack clarity on that final picture.
"Furthermore, over the past two months alone, I have personally requested a meeting with the UK Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Andrew Robathan, on five occasions, but am yet to receive a response.
"In spite of the fact that Mr Robathan made an official visit to the Leuchars RAF base just this week, he did not contact me for a meeting to discuss how we can work together to best serve those armed forces based in and coming from Scotland."
SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson highlighted the poor record of the MoD in awarding contracts north of the Border, with just 50 out of 6000 contracts placed with small companies coming to Scotland.
He said: "Scotland's defence footprint has been disproportionately cut over the last decade, with over 11,000 jobs lost and a £5.6 billion defence underspend which has seen the closure of bases and the creation of significant capability gaps."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article