Nuclear Weapons

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

As always, my noble friend makes an interesting and informed contribution. He underlines my earlier point about why we have the deterrent and what the test of a successful deterrent is. I assure him that the United Kingdom Government support multilateral nuclear disarmament, but we believe that the non-proliferation treaty is the most effective means of progressing that objective.

[Lord Touhig (Lab) [V]]

We welcome the long overdue commitment on defence spending announced last week but, according to the National Audit Office, poor management of Britain’s nuclear weapons programme has led to infrastructure projects being delayed by six years and costs increasing by £1.3 billion. Can the Minister say how much of the £16 billion increase in spending will be used to complete the nuclear programme upgrades?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I cannot attach specific sums of money to the particular components to which the noble Lord refers. He will understand the Government’s commitment to the Dreadnought programme, an extensive, ambitious and challenging programme. We remain on track to deliver the first of class into service in the early 2030s, which we will do within the costs envelope announced in the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015. That estimated the cost to be £31 billion and set aside a £10 billion contingency fund.