Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has branded the lack of action on tackling radiation at a Fife beach ”astonishing and regrettable”.
The Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath MP hit out at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as he made a rare return to Westminster to demand the health hazard at Dalgety Bay is resolved.
Mr Brown warned the area is in danger of becoming the first parcel of land in the UK to be officially designated as radiation-contaminated. And leading an adjournment debate at the House of Commons, he insisted the MoD take urgent action.
Mr Brown said: ”I have called for this debate with one purpose in mind to persuade the Ministry of Defence of the need for urgent action in an area in my constituency where radioactive materials have been discovered.”
The bay was the site of the Donibristle military airfield, where a large number of aircraft were dismantled after the Second World War. The dials in the planes were painted with luminous, radioactive radium so they could be read at night.
They were incinerated and the resulting clinker dumped as landfill to help reclaim part of the headland on the bay.
The presence of radiation has been known since 1990, but the issue gained added urgency in recent weeks after particles 10 times more radioactive than previously registered were found.
Experts from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) believe the particles are being swept ashore from the headland by sea currents.
Mr Brown said it was ”astonishing and regrettable” that the MoD had still not provided a plan for dealing with the material after hearing of the problem.
He said: ”It seems strange that we have seen nuclear submarines, nuclear power stations, experimental nuclear work at Dounreay and yet we face the prospect because of a failure by the MoD that a small, beautiful part of land occupied mainly by a sailing club will carry the title of the only officially registered area of radiation-contaminated land in the UK.
”And the damage to the area, the loss to the community the disruption to local people, the reduction in property values, the loss of a public space where children can play and learn to sail is totally avoidable and can be avoided by decisions of the MoD.”
He added: ”I ask for a recognition by the ministry of its responsibility to agree to develop and to fund a remedial action plan that clears up the site.”
Mr Brown, who was making only his third speech at Westminster since standing down as Prime Minister, added that the community around Dalgety Bay is ”loyal and patriotic”.
He said: ”To fail to act is no way to treat loyal supporters of our armed forces and people who, when Rosyth refitted Polaris submarines, have lived with nuclear dangers for years.
”On behalf of the community I make their demands directly in this house and to the minister today and I expect not only a full and comprehensive response but and I will settle for nothing less an explicit commitment to remedial action.”
But SNP MSP Annabelle Ewing accused Mr Brown of being slow to act.
She said minutes from 2009 showed MoD scientists had been reluctant to test samples from the site because of health concerns.
She said: ”Getting to the root of this hazard must be the first priority but, given this extraordinary admission by scientists in 2009, the MoD, and the previous Labour Government, needs to explain why action was not taken much earlier.”