Trident Renewal

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that Trident should not be renewed.

It is a pleasure to move the motion, which stands in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru—the party of Wales—and the Green party. I am also pleased that the motion is supported by other Members, such as the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who has a long-standing, principled position on this issue.

I thank, in advance, the Secretary of State for Defence for replying to this SNP-Plaid Cymru debate and the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who has responsibility for defence equipment, support and technology, for closing the debate, and the shadow Secretary of State for his participation on behalf of the official Opposition.

Today’s debate is the first opportunity to debate Trident replacement since the publication of the Government’s 2014 update to Parliament on Trident, published on 18 December. That document confirmed that a further £261 million had been reprofiled to be spent on the project ahead of the maingate stage, when MPs will decide whether to authorise construction of new submarines, thereby confirming that Trident is not subject to the Government’s austerity agenda. The document also confirms that the maingate decision will be reached in early 2016. MPs re-standing for election in 2015 and candidates for all parties can expect to be asked by electors how they would vote on Trident.

This debate also offers the first opportunity for the Government and Members to report back from the international conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, held in December in Vienna, and comes ahead of a demonstration on scrapping Trident taking place this Saturday in London, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The event starts outside the Ministry of Defence on Horse Guards avenue, just off Whitehall, at noon, and I encourage as many people as possible who want Trident scrapped to attend.

I also put on the record the sincere appreciation of myself, my colleagues and others in the House to Kate Hudson of CND UK, John Ainslie of CND Scotland and Ben Folley, who supports parliamentary CND, as well as all colleagues in other disarmament and non-proliferation organisations.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being fulsome in his praise for CND. Does he think that that organisation was right during the cold war to dismiss the Soviet threat?

[Angus Robertson]

I do not think anybody should dismiss threats at any time, but the question is whether one believes that the threat of catastrophic nuclear annihilation worked. I happen to believe that nuclear deterrents have not worked, and there are plenty of examples of conflicts that were not avoided—

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[Mr Spellar]

rose—

[Angus Robertson]

Forgive me, but I want to make some progress. The right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make a speech later, and I look forward to hearing it.

The time has come to put down a marker about scrapping Trident and not replacing these weapons of mass destruction. At present, a UK Trident submarine remains on patrol at all times, and each submarine carries an estimated eight missiles, each of which can carry up to five warheads. In total, that makes 40 warheads, each with an explosive power of up to 100 kilotons of conventional high explosive—eight times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, killing an estimated 240,000 people from blast and radiation.

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[Angus Robertson]

If common sense were to prevail, it would have a positive impact on other countries. In the first instance, we have to be responsible for the decisions we make in this country, but I remember that when President Nelson Mandela announced he was changing the South African Government’s position on nuclear weapons, he was lauded for it by Members on both sides of the House. I think the UK would be lauded for making a similar decision.

[Mr Spellar]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Angus Robertson]

I am going to make some progress now. I have given way generously to Members on both sides of the House.

The benefits that I have outlined from the 2013 report could inform the strategic defence and security review that will follow the general election if we were to recast the UK’s approach to nuclear weapons. The reasons for doing so should be obvious to all; they were written about this week in an article, which I would commend to Members, by Paul Mason of “Channel 4 News”. He wrote:

“Russia, jihadis or cyberwarfare—which is the most urgent of the new threats we face? The forthcoming strategic review will force the British military establishment to ask difficult questions. It must separate real threats from imagined ones.

It is in this context that Britain’s hapless defence establishment has to carry out yet another strategic defence and security review. The last one, in 2010, was a valiant effort to impose philosophical coherence on policies, commitments and projects that had become self-perpetuating, strategically meaningless and financially unsustainable. It did not succeed.

In 2010, the essential problem boiled down to two things: maintaining (and modernising) Britain's capacity to do expeditionary warfare, as in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan; and boosting the strategic end of the armed forces—Trident and the Royal Navy—so that we could still claim to be a world power.”

It is worth reflecting on what Paul Mason wrote because of the squeeze to UK conventional defence capabilities in recent years. We have seen significant cuts to personnel, basing, capabilities and, frankly and sadly, too often a substandard approach to the safety of our service personnel.

Members are well aware of the recent difficulties the MOD is in, in terms of cutting regular troop numbers and filling the gaps with reserves. Bases have been closed, including the end of flying operations from two out of three air bases in Scotland. Crucial capability gaps have been exposed, including the absence of a single maritime patrol aircraft since the scrapping of the entire Nimrod fleet. I observe that the Irish Air Corps has more maritime patrol aircraft than the UK at present. In recent weeks in my constituency, one has been able to regularly see maritime patrol aircraft from other countries operating from RAF Lossiemouth, helping to fill a capability that the UK currently has no concrete plans to fill.

Similar shortcomings have been exposed with other capabilities needed to deal with

“violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided midair collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs and other dangerous actions”.

As has been officially confirmed, the Royal Navy has on a number of occasions “gapped” the provision of fleet ready escort vessels; that is, there was no availability of the appropriate vessel to patrol and screen in UK waters.

My constituents have on a number of occasions been able to see the Admiral Kuznetsov, the largest vessel in the Russian northern fleet, and it has been widely reported about the MOD initially depending on reports from Scottish fishing boats before Royal Navy vessels interdicted the visiting vessels from Russia after being dispatched from the south coast of England.

In recent years we have also had to go through a variety of issues where service personnel equipment malfunctioned or was not up to the appropriate safety standard. Most recently, and tragically, this was exposed after the death of three of my constituents aboard two RAF Tornados that collided above the Moray firth. The Tornado fleet still does not have collision avoidance systems fully installed, decades after they were recommended, and there are no concrete plans or timetables for that potentially life-saving equipment for Typhoons or F35 jets. The MOD has the wrong priorities, investing billions in nuclear weapons that it can never use but not properly managing the conventional armed forces which are so necessary.

The national security strategy noted in 2010 that, in a period of changing security threats, it would be sensible to consider how ending the Trident replacement programme would release resources that could be spent on more effective security measures. What commitment will the Secretary of State give to the national security strategy informing the strategic defence and security review on the issue of nuclear weapons? In 2010, the NSS downgraded the threat of a nuclear weapon conflict without the SDSR downgrading the role of nuclear weapons in our military capability. That mistake should not be repeated in 2015.

The Defence Committee, in its report “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century”, argued that at some point in the future the core role of nuclear weapons could be achieved by the deployment of advanced conventional weapons. The NSS and SDSR 2015 should model and scenario-plan such situations, and allow MPs to assess the findings, before we commit further billions to the construction of Trident replacement. Ahead of a final decision on the construction of Trident replacement submarines at the 2016 maingate, the role of SDSR 2015 should be to deliver the most open consultation and debate on the role of UK nuclear weapons and whether we should maintain them at all.

Does the Secretary of State recognise that with the national security strategy placing international terrorism, cybercrime and major accidents and natural hazards such as coastal flooding at the top tier of threats to the UK, recent experience suggests that these areas need greater resources, rather than the false priorities of the nuclear deterrent?

On the cost of Trident replacement, we know from studies, including “In the Firing Line”—an investigation into the hidden costs of replacing Trident—that the costs are astronomic and approach £100 billion. It is not just the costs of development and construction. It is also about the in-service running costs over decades. It is worth noting that despite the fact that Parliament has not given maingate approval for Trident replacement, the MOD has already spent between £2 billion and £3 billion on what are called long-lead items.

Most recently, news emerged about the purchase of the “common missile compartment” that is being built in the US at a cost of approximately £37 million. The spec of the common missile compartment has 12 launch tubes and runs contrary to claims by the MOD in the 2010 SDSR that it will

“reduce the number of operational launch tubes on the submarines from 12 to eight”.

Also the UK’s disarmament ambassador, John Duncan, told the UN that the plan was to

“configure the next generation of submarines accordingly with only eight operational missile”

tubes.

The Royal United Services Institute has estimated that the construction cost of Trident replacement will consume 35% of the procurement budget by the early 2020s. The Minister should be concerned that the cost overruns we have seen with other MOD major projects, such as the Astute submarines, Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers and A400M refuelling aircraft, will be replicated with Trident replacement and will further impact on resources for other equipment and capabilities.

Has the Secretary of State read the recent media reports that the replacement of Britain’s nuclear deterrent means that his Department will be forced to make more significant cuts to troop numbers unless the next Government agree to keep real-terms increases to the defence budget—something that is not being offered to other Departments?

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[Michael Fallon]

I think that the House will be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that he is still committed to a continuous at-sea deterrent. I hope that he will send a copy of those words to the Leader of the Opposition, so that there can no longer be any lingering doubt in Scotland about whether or not this is a continuous at-sea deterrent.

[Mr Spellar]

The right hon. Gentleman is putting up a sterling smokescreen for the Government’s position, as many of his Back-Bench colleagues know. He talks of coalitions. He is not getting on with this because he is in an unholy coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who are preventing him from taking action. He is making a good show of it, but, as he says that he is being clear, let him now be clear to the House.

[Michael Fallon]

The right hon. Gentleman anticipates me, because I now want to turn—indeed, I think we all now want to turn—to the position of the Liberal Democrats. On the one hand, the Liberal Democrats have said that they want to spend billions to

“replace some of the submarines”,

and to make our deterrent part time. They have also committed themselves—at their most recent conference—to allowing our submarines to go to sea with unarmed missiles. Those would be pointless patrols, and that is a pointless nuclear deterrent policy. There are no Liberal Democrats in the Ministry of Defence, and the fact that they have adopted such a reckless and, frankly, dangerous approach explains why.

This country faces the threat of nuclear blackmail from rogue states. It is therefore contemptible for the Scottish nationalists or the Liberal Democrats to suggest that they might use the ultimate guarantor of our freedom and independence as some kind of bargaining chip in some grubby coalition deal. To put it more simply, it is only the Conservative party that will not gamble with the security of the British people.