AS THE SNP candidate for Dumbarton constituency, I have challenged Jackie Baillie, MSP, on several occasions to debate the future of Faslane before the people who depend upon it for their livelihood. Given the Labour Party's perilous finances, I even offered to pay for the hall. Her response has been silence.

Is it not ironic that on the day she spreads needless fear among the workers the Navy orders huge operational savings as a prelude to the naval review? Everyone knows that massive job cuts are on the way as part of the UK and that Faslane will not be immune to them.

Unlike my Labour counterpart, I can guarantee a future for Faslane as the headquarters of the Scottish Navy simply because, as an independent country, we shall require the base for our fleet. The SNP is the only party calling for and able to deliver an expansion of the base for the conventional fleet. Comparisons with the Norwegian and Danish naval establishments support this policy.

Yet the base has the potential to be much more. As Scotland's premier industrial site, we see it as integral to the renaissance of the Lower Clyde as a smart manufacturing and export-driven player. Ports are developing across the globe, and it would be a tragedy for Scotland with its highly skilled and innovative people if we were to miss the boat. I have already called on Scottish Enterprise Dumbarton to investigate the creation of a Jobs Diversification Programme to compliment the establishment of a Jobs Diversification Fund to be established by the incoming SNP government.

Almost every day in Dumbarton constituency I meet young engineers who see little long-term prospects at the base under the current regime. They look on imminent redundancy payments from the base as a passport to a new life abroad because the UK government and its Labour and Liberal Democrat colleagues in Holyrood have neither the vision nor the commitment to develop this wonderful facility, far less the value of manufacturing to our economy. Instead, they see yet another example of the Unionist parties' ability to manage decline. This is the reality that Jackie Baillie ignores.

Graeme McCormick, SNP candidate for Dumbarton constituency, Redhouse Cottage, Arden. IT ILL behoves a Unionist politician, Jackie Baillie, to raise fears for the jobs of people at the Faslane naval base, when her party and the equally culpable Conservatives have been allowing MoD work to be removed from Scotland for years. We can all remember that the Polaris submarine fleet was refitted at Rosyth, but when Trident came on stream, the work was removed to Devonport. Can I also remind Jackie Baillie that the Scottish Labour Party has been opposed to the Trident programme since its inception, along with 80% of the Scottish people? Do not criticise the SNP for offering to implement a policy of which all Scottish parties are in favour except the Tories.

Iain G Gifford, 31, Townhead Road, Inverurie. TO believe in nuclear deterrence in today's world because it was effective in the cold war is a tenable position to hold, but that is not what Jackie Baillie's letter even mentions. Instead, she implies that we must not change defence policy lest jobs (whatever the number) are lost close to home. She chides Alex Salmond for lack of "maturity" in his politics (not just the one policy then) for not spelling out how defence jobs will be replaced if a moral choice is followed.

If Labour discussed major issues with the electorate, it may yet get back some respect in Scotland - but I forgot: London sets the line and you had better walk along it.

Fred Allardice, Hillside, Grange of Lindores, Fife.