Election '97: Portillo slates nuclear policy

One of the great perennial election bogeys of the post-war decades was wheeled out yesterday - the "loony left" defence policy.

Michael Portillo, Secretary of State for Defence, said abandoning nuclear weapons and withdrawing from Nato would leave the armed forces impotent, damage the country's reputation and destroy defence jobs.

But though the rhetoric was familiar, Mr Portillo had a new target. This election's unilateralists are not in new Labour, its CND image excised by Messrs Kinnock, Smith and Blair, but the Scottish National Party.

"The SNP has a vintage loony-left defence policy. It is easily the most left-wing defence policy on offer at this election," Mr Portillo told an Edinburgh news conference. Outside was the Tories' latest poster, a cartoon pillorying the Nationalists in a "Hands Up" style once used against Labour.

In an independent Scotland, the SNP would negotiate a phased, "but complete", withdrawal of Trident from the Clyde. The party's objection to nuclear weapons would be incompatible with membership of Nato and so it proposes a phased withdrawal from that too, though a free Scotland would still co-operate with the alliance.

The Scottish Army would have 9,000 regular troops. The Scottish Navy would have a surface fleet and submarines and there would be a conventional air force.

But Mr Portillo said the forces proposed by the SNP would be incapable of engaging in "high intensity conflict" and therefore unable to take part in maintaining peace around the world.

Many defence industry jobs would also be at risk. "It is implausible that in a separate Scotland, that Scottish industries should go on supplying the needs of armed forces in other parts of the United Kingdom," he claimed.

But Michael Russell, chief executive of the SNP, said Scotland had lost 20,000 defence-related jobs since 1992 under Mr Portillo's stewardship. "Portillo should be coming to Scotland to apologise ... not to display his usual breathtaking arrogance."

The SNP is promising to spend pounds 70m over four years to help industries diversify away from weapons production. All service personnel and MoD employees from Scotland would be offered an opportunity to transfer to the new state's forces.

Mr Russell said Scots were "vastly in favour" of getting rid of atomic weapons. "What small nation of 5 million people would want to maintain nuclear weapons?" he asked.