Trident Alternatives Review

Bob Ainsworth Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

That is of course a legitimate point for political debate, but the purpose of the review was to consider alternative nuclear weapon systems that could act as a deterrent. The review was never designed to consider the option of unilateral disarmament, although the hon. Lady is free to argue for that.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

I give way to the former Secretary of State.

[Mr Ainsworth]

If this was the most comprehensive examination of our nuclear weapons system in a generation, why did the right hon. Gentleman not take evidence from individuals outside government?

[Danny Alexander]

It was a review conducted within government, taking advice from senior officials, as with every other government review. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman has been involved in such reviews in the past, and I am sure he knows better.

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[Mr Jones]

That is exactly the case, and I think that the Defence Secretary has said the same thing. It will be achieved not by sticking a finger in the air and thinking of a policy, but by thinking about what we need to keep our nuclear deterrent credible and by maintaining the important continuous-at-sea deterrent.

As has been said, we are convinced that the only credible way forward for a minimum nuclear deterrent is a continuous-at-sea deterrent; otherwise, the UK would be vulnerable. The Chief Secretary’s suggestion would not only make the UK more vulnerable, but lead to a situation where we would not possess first strike or even second-strike capabilities. It would also be a significant escalatory factor if the UK stepped up its armed CASD posture. It is simply not credible and it is also very dangerous.

There are options that the alternatives review did not consider, so why are the Liberal Democrats set on the proposals outlined by the Chief Secretary? I think it is the old Liberal Democrat trick—many of us who have dealt with them in local government have seen this over many years—of trying to ride both horses at the same time. They want to appease the party’s unilateralist wing and persuade them that they are scaling down the nuclear ladder, while simultaneously claiming to the electorate that they have a credible nuclear policy, but they have been found out by the alternatives review.

The Liberal Democrats have commissioned a review in Government time, using taxpayers’ money and resources, in order to supplement their own party’s policy manifesto for 2015. I tabled a written question to the Chief Secretary yesterday asking how much the review cost, and I await his response. The Lib Dem plans have been found wanting and they are now scrambling around frantically for a bizarre policy solution in order to advance their much-heralded differentiation strategy, through which they are trying to place themselves between the Labour party and their coalition partners.

We have all waited for the publication of this report and I think we all genuinely thought it would suggest a credible alternative. Our position is clear: we are committed to the minimum, credible independent nuclear deterrent, which is why we put that policy to the House in 2006. I completely disagree with the Chief Secretary’s comment that this is the most thorough review undertaken. That is complete nonsense, because that review was done in 2006. He should also look at the three comprehensive reports commissioned by the Defence Committee, which covered all the issues.

[Mr Ainsworth]

We consulted on it.

[Mr Jones]

As my right hon. Friend reminds me, we also consulted on the issue and did not conduct our review behind closed doors, as was the case with this one.

We also believe that the best way to deliver the nuclear deterrent is through a continuous-at-sea deterrent. The review does not appear to suggest anything to the contrary. In fact, it reinforces our point.

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[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

The political class in this country and others struggles to communicate and maintain credibility with the electorate. It is not always our fault, but sometimes we are to blame, and when we commission such a report and present it in this manner, we do serious damage to our credibility when talking to our electorate. In my opinion, the report was born of unworthy motives and conducted without any outside consultation, and to present it with the kind of hyperbole we have heard tonight—as the most comprehensive examination of our nuclear deterrent in a generation—is clear and utter nonsense. The report picks apart nothing in the 2006 White Paper; indeed, despite the best efforts of the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) at the last general election, it confirms the basic underpinning of the report and denies the credibility of what was said at the last general election: that we can have a cheap nuclear deterrent.

Of course, there is the question of whether we should have a nuclear deterrent at all. It is raised in all our constituencies all the time and is a perfectly reasonable question. Some Members believe and say openly that we should not have one, while others, I think, believe the same, but do not say so openly. The first question, then, is whether we should have one at all, but the report was not commissioned to examine that question; it was commissioned to examine the second question, which inevitably flows from the first: if we decide to have a nuclear deterrent, what kind should it be? What is the best system? What is affordable, effective and a real deterrent? That is where the report falls down.

There is no such thing as a non-credible or a less-credible deterrent. There can be no such thing as a part-time deterrent. To be a deterrent, something has to deter. Doing anything less than deter stops a nuclear deterrent being a deterrent at all. It turns it into what? Potentially, at times of crisis, it turns into an invitation; it most certainly turns it from a deterrent into a weapon. If we look at what underpins the White Paper— and as the previous speaker clearly stated—we have seen that such a weapon would be dangerous to deploy. How, when and in what circumstances would it be put to sea? How would we disguise, at a time of rising tension, that we were doing that? It would be dangerous to deploy and difficult to sustain. It is all right to say that if we have three boats, we could, for a time in some circumstances, up our level of deterrent and go back to continuous-at-sea deterrence. Yes, we could do that for a while if we got ahead of the crisis, stepped back to CASD, deployed a boat at sea and kept it at sea throughout that time. But with three boats, for how long could we do that?

The Government and the Labour party accept—indeed, it would be nonsense not to accept it—that technology may change the need for a fourth boat. If it does, why on earth would we do anything other than have three boats? However, if technology does not change those basic parameters, we will lose our ability to deter for a considerable time. This is not something we can just rescale in a matter of months; it would take years to rescale and we would therefore be rendering our deterrent non-sustainable.

This report does not ask an honest question and I do not believe it was an honest process, but the review has at least flushed out the issue of whether Trident can be done on the cheap. I would not want to have an examination in a cheap operating theatre by a doctor who had been trained on the cheap, and I would not want a deterrent that was done on the cheap. If we are to have a deterrent, let us have a deterrent that deters, as that is the only one worth having.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I can agree to the extent that we must ensure that we build enough capability that we can mount the deterrent we will need at the point that we need it. What that will comprise is a matter for further debate and further study and I note with interest that even those on the Labour Front Bench and the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), acknowledge that it remains to be seen whether we need four or three to do that.

[Mr Ainsworth]

Just let me see whether I understand the hon. Gentleman’s position: is he saying that we should build enough submarines to be able to go back to continuous-at-sea deterrence and to maintain it at any point at which the threat increases?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I am certainly saying that I think we should have the ability to go back to continuous-at-sea deterrence when we think we need it. I do not know that I would go so far as to say we should be capable of sustaining it indefinitely—I think that is unnecessary in scale—but I do think we should be capable of sustaining it for periods of time when there are heightened tensions. The problem we face is that we run the risk of having a Rolls-Royce nuclear deterrent at the expense of having an Austin Mini as the remainder of our defence capability. During the very decade when expenditure on the Trident replacement will be at its height, there will be a long list of other high-profile, highly important defence projects competing for what we all know will be very limited defence resources.

There are some obvious examples. We are going to put the joint strike fighter on to our two aircraft carriers, and we do not have the slightest idea at this stage what the unit cost of them will be on a through-life basis. We are going to build the Type 26 frigate. We have got to do something about the Army’s equipment programme given that the future rapid effect system programme is now in tatters as a result of the last few rounds of cuts we have had to make. We are going to need another generation of remotely piloted aircraft. We are going to need more amphibious shipping when HMS Ocean goes out of service in 2018. We need more helicopters. We need more ISTAR assets, and we need to deal with the cyber-threat, which the national security strategy said was one of the primary threats and in which we are investing modestly but nowhere near enough.

If anybody thinks that the resources committed to defence, or that can be anticipated as being available to defence, are enough to pay for all of those on the scale everybody in Government, and probably in the Opposition as well, would want to see and think is necessary in terms of our own strategic defence and security review, something is going to have to give. We cannot afford to do all that and have a nuclear deterrent scaled to deal with the menace of the cold war 25 years after the Berlin wall has come down and 19 years after we and the Russians de-targeted each other.

It simply is not the case that in order to get a deterrent effect from our military capability we have to patrol it all the time. That is absolute nonsense. The British, the French and the Americans have a posture of continuous-at-sea deterrence; the Russians and Chinese do not. The Indians and the Pakistanis take each other’s nuclear weapons perfectly seriously, but that does not mean they patrol with them the whole time. It is complete nonsense to say we have to do it on that basis.

I hope the report published yesterday will inform a national debate about this before a decision is taken in 2016, and when that is done the next generation of the nuclear deterrent will have to compete for funds alongside all the other platforms I have described, which are far more relevant to the threats we actually face.