UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Douglas Chapman Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

It is a sad irony that a week after the long-awaited Chilcot report highlighted the worrying extent of group-think in Whitehall and Westminster, a large number of MPs will be traipsing through the Lobby in support of the principle of renewing a deterrent that represents a 20th century solution to the 21st century defence and security problems that we all experience today. Those MPs could include those who believed the UK Government’s claptrap on Iraq. Perhaps nothing has been learned from Chilcot, and those MPs will be doing exactly the same on Trident.

The Defence Committee has recently completed an inquiry into the implications of an increased Russian assertiveness for UK security. In evidence session after evidence session, I struggled to find any real evidence of why I should support the renewal of Trident at a cost of up to £205 billion. In fact, as witness after witness listed the very real 21st century threats faced by the UK and our NATO and EU allies, most, if not all, could be filed under the heading of hybrid warfare, or terrorism.

Closer to home, we see an increase in Russian naval and air activities in our own territory, and the pattern is very similar to that experienced in Ukraine. There is no outright aggression, but a determination to poke, prod, check and test reaction times, which, from the UK perspective, have often been laughably slow. For example, the last time the Russian carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, took shelter in Scottish waters, it took 24 hours for a frigate to arrive from Portsmouth to escort it from the Moray Firth.

[Alberto Costa]

Had the Scottish National party won the independence argument, what Army or Navy would it have to protect Scottish waters from such infringement?

[Douglas Chapman]

One must realise that, as an independent nation, we could provide the same support to NATO as every other single small European country, such as Denmark, Sweden and so on. It is a shameful neglect of security around Scotland that we have not one single surface vessel to protect our shoreline, and it simply points out that the age of deterrence can be viewed in so many different ways.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Was it not the case in that last entry into our waters that the Ministry of Defence heard about it only through Twitter?

[Douglas Chapman]

That could certainly be the case. I am sure that my hon. Friend is better informed on that point than some members of the Ministry of Defence.

Recently, the Committee visited NATO and discussed the needs of Scotland and the UK. What we heard a lot about from NATO was how we improve and increase our conventional forces, particularly those who could respond to hybrid threats. Indeed, the most prominent commitment that emerged from the Warsaw summit just last week was for a multinational brigade to be placed in the Baltic States and in Poland, which we wholeheartedly supported. What also emerged was this principle of a modern deterrence, which Trident resolutely is not.

The UK focus should be on what we can deliver for our NATO allies, instead of desperately clutching to this vestige of a long-gone superpower status—please, wake up and smell the polonium. We need to do that very quickly. Our NATO allies would rather be focused on the most basic of tasks, protecting our UK territory and that of our neighbourhood. When that Russian carrier was carrying out its activities in the Moray Firth, there were no major surface ships based in Scotland—indeed there was none north of the channel. Trident endangered us by fooling us into thinking that nuclear deterrence is the only sort of deterrence that we need.

The Royal Navy is now reduced to only 17 usable frigates and destroyers. To put that into context, the force that retook the Falklands in 1982 had more than 40 ships. The Falklands is currently without major warship protection for the first time since that conflict and UK anti-piracy and people smuggling operations in the Mediterranean and Caribbean are frequently undertaken by vessels that are simply not fit for task. To put it simply, Trident is eating into our conventional budget, which leads me to the very nub of the argument—every penny spent on Trident means a penny less spent on conventional defence. It is hardly any surprise that Admiral Lord West recently told the Defence Committee that the Navy had effectively run out of money in support of the new Type 26 programme. Therefore, while the entire Successor programme has funds ring-fenced with added generous contingencies, projects such as the Type 26s, due to be built on the Clyde, face delay after delay with a knock-on effect on construction, affecting jobs, skills and the workforce and our capability to defend ourselves.

Finally, this vote tonight puts hundreds of years of shipbuilding on the Clyde at risk because the MOD has skewed every military budget it has to spend, and it is spending that on Trident. More morally repugnant weapons of mass destruction can no longer be tolerated—indeed we must look at using other methods of modern deterrence—and to quote the Prime Minister, they are a “reckless” gamble that the country can ill afford.