Liam Fox
Main Page: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)Department Debates - View all Liam Fox's debates with the HM Treasury
(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
I will happily give way after I have made a bit more progress.
According to the review’s description of alternative postures, those options could include operating fewer Vanguard submarines, ending CASD for less frequent patrols, and unarmed patrols.
Of course, coming down the ladder depends on judgments that we make about future threats and our legal and international obligations. I should make it clear that adopting a non-continuous posture means accepting a different calculation of risk from that which existed during the cold war. However, I consider it imperative for us to update our calculation of risk. If CASD is an insurance policy, we are paying too high a premium for our needs.
Danny Alexander
I am going to make some more progress.
The 2010 national security strategy considers state-on-state nuclear war to be a second-tier threat. The argument that a current adversary would take the opportunity to target the UK during a period when no boat is covertly deployed and to launch an overwhelming nuclear strike against Britain is not supported by any analysis that I have seen.
Danny Alexander
I am going to make some progress—oh, I am sorry. I will give way to the former Defence Secretary.
Danny Alexander
As my right hon. Friend will know, the first question is a matter of political judgment for the Government of the day. As for the second, it would depend on which of the alternative postures was adopted. They would all be designed to allow us to surge back to the so-called focused deterrence, which would sustain a continuous posture in response to our needs.
The reality is that in the current circumstances, and for the foreseeable future, the ultimate guarantee does not need to sit on a hair trigger. We can afford to go much further in de-alerting our nuclear deterrent. The option of non-continuous deterrence does not threaten current security, and by changing postures we can reduce cost at the same time. For example, ending CASD and procuring one fewer successor submarine would make a saving of about £4 billion over the life of the system.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
I will begin by saying that this is not the most comprehensive review of this subject carried out in recent years: the previous Labour Government carried out a comprehensive review. I can say that with some confidence, because one of the first things I did as Defence Secretary when we came into government was to ask to see that work and check whether its assumptions and costs were still valid. It was my view that they were, and that continuous-at-sea deterrence still represented the best system and best value for our nuclear deterrence.
In our review, we looked at the previous Government’s review and at the systems that have since been rejected again. No Member wants to have an air-launch system or a silo-based system in their constituency. At the time, the Liberal Democrats put forward a proposal on the cruise-based system that they believed to be credible. We, of course, maintained our belief that CASD was the best, along with a replacement for the Trident programme.
There are a number of reasons why I was happy for the review to go ahead. In particular, it would show the Liberal Democrats that the cruise-based system was a non-starter. First, it would be too expensive. It would require research and development for the missile system and for changes to the submarine programme. It would be slower and more easily intercepted. It would require our submarines to be closer to target, and therefore more likely to be detected. It would also—no small point—be illegal under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. It was a non-starter. I am therefore pleased that the Chief Secretary, who is not in his place at the moment, came to the conclusion, rather belatedly, that it would be good to keep the Trident replacement system. It is a gain for the whole House and the country that the Liberal Democrats have seen sense.
What is deeply depressing, however, is the willingness of the Liberal Democrats to abandon CASD. It has been the position of both major parties—the Labour party and the Conservative party—to have CASD based on four boats, or fewer if technology allowed. Let us be frank: in the foreseeable future, technology will not allow us to go below four boats. We need one going out, one coming in, one in refit and one in training. It is not possible to maintain what we have and what we want at lower levels than that, given present technology. If we go down to three, CASD cannot be guaranteed. If we go to two boats, we cannot have it at all, so that is an unrealistic proposition.
What are the Liberal Democrats saying with this policy? They are saying that we would abandon CASD, but deploy at times of increased international tension. What does any Member think would happen to international tension if we deployed a nuclear system that was not otherwise deployed? That would be a crazy foreign policy. I have to say to my Liberal Democrat colleagues that it is all very well to talk about stepping down the ladder, but if the bottom of the ladder is hanging off a cliff, that is not exactly a sensible manoeuvre.
On cost, the Chief Secretary said that they would save £4 billion over the lifetime of the programme—£4 billion over a 34 to 50-year period. That £4 billion is the equivalent to less than two weeks’ spending on the national health service, or six days of what we spend on pensions and welfare. This is supposed to be value for money. For that infinitesimally small saving over a 50-year period, they would abandon a crucial element of our national security—a very interesting definition of value for money.
Dr Julian Lewis
For the sake of clarity, it is important to stress that in the report the only options for Trident are a four-boat fleet or a three-boat fleet. That is where the £4 billion would come into it. The report does not even consider or cost a two-boat fleet, because it would be impossible to reinstate to a higher level of readiness.
Dr Fox
It is not possible to put in monetary terms the risk that moving to a two-boat fleet would pose to the UK. They are completely different currencies. It is ridiculous to say that there would be a £4 billion saving, given the monumental disruption it would cause to our submarine-building programme and all the jobs likely to be lost, as the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) pointed out many times. The calculations in the report are fraudulent economics.
The crucial question to be asked by anyone who wants to dismantle or diminish the CASD posture is: what will the world look like in 30, 40 or 50 years? It is all very well to say, “The risk assessments says that at the moment it’s okay”, but we do not know what the risk assessments will be in the future, and it is not our job to play roulette with the security of future generations in our country. We are being offered 50 years of protection from nuclear blackmail for the people of our country. There are those who say that £20 billion or more of capital costs is too much for 50 years’ protection from nuclear blackmail, but that it was all right to spend £9.5 billion for six weeks for the Olympics. We need to get our priorities right in this country and recognise what is important in the longer term.
CASD gives us secure insurance that is proven. It is the best deterrent, and to say anything other is political posturing, I am afraid. As has been said, we could drive a nuclear submarine through this report. We all like a good joke in politics, but this is no laughing matter. If it is a joke, however, let us hope it rebounds on the Liberal Democrats, not on the people of this country.
Sir Nick Harvey
Not at the moment.
Given that this report was commissioned by a Government who are a coalition of two parties with fundamentally different opinions on the issue, it was never going to come forward with proposals. It was about considering the alternatives and informing the debate that might follow.
I contend that nobody can rationally argue that the nature and scale of the nuclear threat that the United Kingdom faces in 2013 is the same as it was at the height of the cold war. Then we had a known nuclear adversary, the Soviet Union, that had British targets in its sights and we, similarly, had Soviet targets in our sights. We believed that it might strike at a moment’s notice and we therefore thought it was essential that we were ready at a moment’s notice to strike back. But 25 years after the Berlin wall came down, one cannot rationally argue that the threat we face today is the same as it was then. We can debate what threats we might face in the future, but we cannot argue that the threat we face today is the same as it was in 1980.
Dr Fox
We are talking about building a system that will protect us against the potential risks in 20, 30 or 40 years. The year before the Berlin wall came down, no one could have predicted the world we would be in today. No one can predict what the world will look like in the future. The hon. Gentleman is asking us to take an irrational and dangerous risk.
Sir Nick Harvey
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend that we must consider the threat we might face in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time, so we must therefore ensure that we have a nuclear deterrent in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time that is capable of deterring the threat that we might face at that point. My point is simply that the threat we face today is not the same as it was at the height of the cold war. It therefore cannot make sense to operate it on a 24/7 continuous basis facing a threat that simply does not exist at the moment.
I understand the view of those who say that we must retain enough capability to ensure that, in the future when we face threats we cannot anticipate today but know intuitively could come, there is enough of a deterrent to repel them. That is perfectly logical, but it does not make sense for the nuclear deterrent—uniquely among our military capability—to be on patrol the whole time when even our national security strategy has stressed that it is for a second-tier threat and when we do not use our military capability to deter the primary threats on that continuous patrolling basis.
To answer the points made by my right hon. Friend the former Defence Secretary, I am not saying that it might not be necessary in the future to crank up to a more rigorous posture—it might well be—but I do not see how anyone can rationally argue that we have to do that at the moment. The idea that the nuclear capability has a deterrent effect at all only by being patrolled 24/7 is clearly absurd. All the rest of our capability has a deterrent effect against a variety of aggressors in a variety of scenarios and we do not see the need to exercise any of it on a 24/7 basis.
John Woodcock
The hon. Gentleman is right. If we were living through a Monty Python sketch, this would be the point when the army major intervenes and says that this is all getting too silly and we have to stop it at once. But of course the consequences for the nation’s security, and the 13,000 people directly employed in Barrow and across the UK, would be bitterly serious if the Liberal Democrats had their way on their part-time deterrent idea. That is why it would be a very good thing if this shambolic process now sunk without trace. Even their own document makes it clear just how hopeless an alternative a part-time deterrent would be. It states that
“a 3-boat fleet would risk multiple unplanned breaks in continuous covert patrolling as well as requiring regular planned breaks for maintenance and/or training.”
They are effectively suggesting that we pay billions for something that we cannot be sure will be available to do the deterring when needed.
Proper analysis of the figures makes clear the economic folly of the argument. The Chief Secretary told me that he had considered the cost of maintaining Britain’s submarine-building capacity at Barrow and elsewhere, but his own document makes no suggestion, as far as I can see, that the savings take account of that. It suggests that the extra costs from 2025 of bringing forward the next submarine programme—the successors to the Astute—to avoid a crippling gap in the order book of the shipyard are simply not considered in the £4 billion saving. When he sums up, will the Minister finally confirm what the Chief Secretary has so far avoided admitting—that these relatively modest savings would be completely wiped out by the extra cost?
The choice that the next Government but one would face would be either to leave a gap in construction so large that it could end the country’s capacity to build submarines for ever, sacrificing all those 13,000 jobs, or to end up saving no money at all by embarking on a whole new submarine-building enterprise before it is needed by the Royal Navy.
John Woodcock
Absolutely. On the Liberal Democrats’ official figures, the savings will not even start to accrue until 2025, but by that time work would have to be well under way in Barrow shipyard and the supply chain to make the costly preparations for the Astute successor submarines. The Liberal Democrats need to come clean about the extra cost, because it makes a mockery of what the right hon. Gentleman rightly said are incredibly modest savings over a 30, 40 or 50-year period.
It should be remembered that the capacity to build nuclear submarines is one of the very few sovereign protected capabilities deemed so important and sensitive that the overwhelming majority of construction must be carried out on British soil. The submarine supply chain—centred in Barrow, but stretching from Aberdeen to Plymouth—is so advanced and finely tuned that any period in which it is left idle risks destroying it entirely. That is the lesson of the mass redundancies in my constituency in the 1990s. It is a great shame that some of those who now have the privilege of governing do not seem to have learnt a thing.