Statement: Basing Review

The Presiding Officer (Tricia Marwick): The next item of business is a statement by Keith Brown on the basing review. The minister will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.

14:40
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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

Is the minister aware of the bitterness that burns bright in Moray at the closure of RAF Kinloss? The minister has indicated that there will be a small increase in personnel numbers at Kinloss. In theory, that is welcome. However, is he aware that that takes no account of the P45s that are being dished out by the UK Administration with gay abandon and which will negate the effect of that increase? The bitterness remains.

The Minister for Transport and Veterans (Keith Brown): That is the background against which the decision was taken and the statement made by the UK Government. We have seen a vast number of redundancies. We are told by the MOD that there will be 5,000 more redundancies across the UK—1,000 may perhaps come from Scotland. Of course, P45s are being delivered to troops on the front line in Afghanistan. Who would have thought that a Conservative Government would have reduced itself to that?

It is absolutely the case that Scotland will lose out badly, not least because, as Stewart Stevenson has mentioned, the cuts take money out of local communities. If you reduce a base that was supposed to have 1,500 personnel to 900, you are removing a huge chunk of finance from that local community. As I said at the start of my statement, the decision will have an impact on Scotland socially and economically.