UNION leaders have warned that Ministry of Defence plans to sell off the Coulport nuclear weapons depot on the Clyde threaten public safety.

A mass meeting of workers from Prospect, the union representing 300 managers and specialists at the base, was told yesterday that the privatisation plans were dogma-driven, unaffordable and unsustainable in the short-term and had direct implications for nuclear safety.

Alan Grey, president of Prospect’s 8000-strong MoD group, said: “Coming on top of the recent decimation of nuclear reactor safety staff within the adjacent nuclear submarine base in Faslane, the proposal shows a reckless disregard for the safety of the equipment and processes managed by the two Clyde establishments.”

Under the plans, which were revealed by our sister paper the Sunday Herald, the running of the base would be handed over to a newly formed private consortium called ABL and most of the staff would be transferred to it.

The group is headed by US arms dealer Lockheed Martin and includes AWE, which runs the Aldermaston nuclear weapons factory in Berkshire, and British engineering company Babcock.

Mr Grey said MoD chiefs appeared “to be driven by dogma and the perverse need to cut civil service numbers, even though the cost of delivering the proposal will cost MoD more in the short-term”.

He added: “In 2002, the government of the day part-privatised the Clyde submarine base at Faslane and Coulport.

“In doing so they split a sustainable single entity into two unsustainable and competing entities.”