DOOMED airbase RAF Lyneham will be discussed in the House of Commons tonight (Tuesday) amid concern about possible future uses of the site.

James Gray, MP for North Wiltshire, called for the adjournment debate. It comes in the wake of him demanding answers about the Lyneham closure from the Ministry of Defence. He is still waiting for a response from the MoD to questions about whether the base was consistently under-funded, leading to an inevitable shutdown.

And, more importantly for the site's future, he has also called for details about whether it will be able to stay open until 2012. According to Mr Gray, there are reasons to believe this date is unrealistic.

He has said 2008 may be a more reasonable date for winding operations down.

Tonight's debate will give Mr Gray a chance to tell other MPs about these matters, but is unlikely to produce any concrete results.

Mr Gray's Commons discussion comes just days after the prospect of RAF Lyneham being turned into a commercial airport was raised in the letters page of The Times.

The correspondent suggested RAF Lyneham could be used as an alternative to other as yet undeveloped sites being considered for airports in the South West and Midlands area.

Mr Gray, who is also the Conservative spokesman on rural affairs, described the idea as horrific.

He said: "We are very much opposed to any such thing. The notion of having a civil airport in my constituency is horrific."

The MP also said there were technical reasons why Lyneham could not be used as a non-military base. He cited the length of the runway and steepness of hills as obstacles.

It is not the first time a plan to use RAF Lyneham as an airport has been considered. In March the Evening Advertiser reported that Aviation Minister, David Jamieson, had suggested the base be considered for civilian airport use.

Thousands of jobs in Wiltshire are thought to have been put at risk following the announcement earlier this month that the transport base must close. Military operations from the Wiltshire base will move to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire by 2012.

Meanwhile, the main contractor at RAF Lyneham has confirmed that there may be a small number of redundancies among its 279 staff.

Babcock Defence Services, which is based at East Midlands Airport near Derby, has confirmed that there may be redundancies as a result of a business review being undertaken at the base.

A spokesman for Babcock said: "If there are redundancies, they will be in the tens rather than hundreds of people."