Trident Alternatives Review

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

I will take some interventions later, but in the light of what Mr Speaker has said, I will make some progress.

A different approach could allow long-term savings—about £4 billion over the life of the system—to be made against current plans. Let me be clear: this does not change current Government policy to maintain Britain’s nuclear deterrent and prepare for a successor system. It does mean that we can at last have an open and much more informed debate about what our nuclear weapons are for and how they should be deployed—a debate that provides our country with a chance to change course before the main-gate decision for a successor system is taken in 2016.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Mr Baron]

rose—

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Alexander]

One of the review’s assumptions is that we would wish to maintain our sovereign submarine building capability. That is the policy of the Government and it sounds as though it is the hon. Gentleman’s policy, too—[Interruption.] If hon. Members will calm down for a second, I will tell them that it does include the cost of maintaining that capability. All the alternatives include the procurement of further submarines after the successor.

As the House knows, the review was commissioned by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, initially with my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon as the Minister in charge. My hon. Friend deserves a huge share of the credit for this work. It has been taken forward under the auspices of the Cabinet Office, with a cross-government team of expert civilian and military officials. I should like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work.

During my visits to Aldermaston, Faslane and Coulport as part of the review, I had the privilege of meeting many of the submariners of the Royal Navy, as well as the scientists, engineers and other civilians who support them. They are some of Britain’s hidden heroes, often unsung, who operate at the limits of human understanding. Seeing them in action also gives me confidence that if the next Government were to change their mission, they would deliver it just as effectively, and in the most efficient and credible way. The review will provide the opportunity to do that.

As I said in response to an earlier intervention, it is also important to be clear what the review was not about. First, it was not about short-term savings to help to deal with the current deficit. It is possible under some of the options that savings against current plans would start to accrue from the mid-2020s, but this is not about back-filling budgets in the next Parliament. As I also said earlier, the review has not addressed the question of whether the UK should remain a nuclear weapon power, because complete unilateral disarmament is not the policy of either the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats—or, indeed, of Labour. The review did not seek to address the question of whether we should possess nuclear weapons. However, the scale and posture of our nuclear weapon capability can change.

[Mr Baron]

Many of us who believe that a continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent is absolutely essential, and that anything else involves living in cloud cuckoo land, also believe that we should honour those who were in at the very beginning of our nuclear arms age—the British nuclear test veterans. The British Nuclear Test Veterans Association and many parliamentarians from both sides of the House have come together to campaign for recognition for the veterans. We have written to the Prime Minister and had meetings with Ministers. Will the Government look again at the campaign, because we rank very lowly on the international table of decency on this issue—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s intervention has gone on for too long.