Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Dave Doogan.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm the amount that the United Kingdom has spent on the defence nuclear enterprise in the past financial year 2021-22, and the equal but opposite cost of that nuclear expenditure to operational capacity, conventional equipment procurement, investment in service accommodation, and all other underfunded UK defence priorities?

[Mr Wallace]

We need to try to ensure that we find the funding to fund all those capabilities, and we must ensure at the time of placing a contract that we have certainty in the costs overall, to make sure there are no overruns.

[Dave Doogan]

The Secretary of State never answered my question, because he was not listening to the question. The answer is £6.6 billion, and that is to fund what we hear is the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent. I have a fairly well honed view of what independence looks like, and it does not look like the Secretary of State going cap in hand to the United States to ask it to bring forward its development of the W93 nuclear warhead. Will he explain what is independent about the UK’s nuclear dependency on the United States, except the cost in dollars for those weapons?

[Mr Wallace]

Where do I start? What is independent? I will tell the hon. Gentleman what is not independent, which is the SNP Government in Scotland placing a contract for ferries in Turkey. Supporting Scottish yards? That is not very independent.

The hon. Gentleman will know, as he seems to have a real interest in the technology and development of the nuclear warhead, that under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty we cannot ask the Americans to develop a nuclear weapon for us. That has to be done sovereignly, and if he read that treaty he would understand that.