ONE of the UK's leading campaigners for nuclear disarmament has called for Rolls-Royce to stop building submarine reactors and move into green energy instead.
Bruce Kent, 84, the honorary vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), made the comment after giving a talk at Derby Cathedral yesterday.
Workers at the firm's high-security Raynesway site in Derby design, manufacture and provide technical support to the Royal Navy's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, known as Trident.
These are the only British nuclear weapons system in service. Work on a potential replacement for the Trident system has begun, although no final decisions have been taken.
In response to Mr Kent, a Rolls-Royce spokesperson said: "Issues relating to the Trident Successor programme are strictly a matter for Government and we do not involve ourselves in speculation. We have important work to focus on in support of our customer, the Ministry of Defence, whom we are proud to serve."
Mr Kent said it should not be the case that jobs would be lost if Rolls-Royce stopped working on the submarines.
He said: "In World War Two, five million people went from working in a war industry to other jobs because there was an overall Government plan."
Mr Kent said that the need to tackle climate change meant engineers were going to be needed for "wind farms, wave-power generation, all sorts of things"
He said the bosses at Rolls-Royce should "sit down with business leaders and discuss what is needed in this country".
He added: "At the moment we are paying people to make the world a more dangerous place."
During a question and answer session after his talk, Mr Kent also had a dig at Rolls-Royce over accusations that the firm did not pay UK tax on its profits last year.
According to research published last month by the Mail on Sunday, Rolls-Royce, which is Derby's largest private-sector employer, was one of 12 large companies that did not pay any corporation tax – a tax on profits – in 2011.
The company previously said 85% of its profits were made overseas – rather in the UK. And it added it was spending "hundreds of millions of pounds" on research in the UK, which had allowed it to reduce its tax bill.
Asked who was making money out of nuclear weapons, Mr Kent had said: "The company that runs the Derby Rolls-Royce affair is not paying tax in this country so (in that case) I don't know who is making money out of it."
During his talk, Mr Kent said of the North Korea situation: "If a student walks into a school with a grenade you don't give everyone else grenades, you try and get rid of the grenade the delinquent brought in."
