Trident Alternatives Review

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Yesterday we were able to read the Government’s much-anticipated report on Trident and its alternatives, and I am delighted that it confirmed that the most effective and value-for-money option for the deterrent was a four-submarine CASD. How vexing, though, for the civil servants who worked so hard on it that half, or more accurately one seventh, of the Government have decided to disregard those findings, and to promote an option that was not included in the report’s brief because it was considered to be too ludicrous: a two-boat, part-time deterrent, which, as we all know, is no deterrent at all.

I would not go so far as to say that some of my best friends are Liberal Democrats, but I am sure that their hearts are in the right place. Sadly, the location of the collective Liberal Democrat head is not always obvious; certainly, on this issue they seem to have taken leave of their senses. Yesterday the Liberal Democrats were in chaos, reeling from the discovery that the three-boat option did not deliver the savings for which they had hoped. In scenes reminiscent of Mitchell and Webb’s “Numberwang”, they ran around Whitehall and Millbank yelling different numbers in the hope that one of them might strike a chord.

Perhaps a more appropriately named game show to describe yesterday’s endeavours would be “Pointless”. Let me explain why. The report puts the cost of two new submarines at £10 billion, the cost of three at £14 billion and the cost of four at £16 billion, excluding the attendant costs of missiles, warheads and infrastructure. According to the Liberal Democrats, those figures plainly show £6 billion of waste, but that analysis reveals a skewed sense of value for money. My understanding of the figures is that we could spend £16 billion on something or £10 billion on nothing, and the Liberal Democrat preference for the latter option has led me to conclude that it may not be a coincidence that the MOD budget was balanced only when Main Building became a Liberal Democrat no-fly zone in the last reshuffle.

In the absence of the Liberal Democrat head, it is perhaps not unsurprising that they are ruled by their heart, which in truth yearns for UK nuclear disarmament. Certainly the former Defence Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), when debating the matter with me yesterday on the BBC, would not agree that we could now proceed to produce two submarines and have a debate about the others later. If he had been pro some kind of deterrent, he would have agreed.

It may or may not be the case that we face no nuclear threat at the moment—although how would we know, because we would have deterred it?—but we cannot know what the future will bring. That point has been well made by several Members today. The Liberal Democrat position is contingent on the continuation of the current international climate, which, I remind Members, is influenced by CASD. Do the Liberal Democrats know something that we do not? Does their influence reach places that we cannot reach? Has the Tigger-like charisma of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and his cycling crusade, for which I salute him, had such an impact on the bicycle-loving populace of China that, should that state fall into malign hands, we need only deploy him on his bike to avert disaster? Or perhaps the Business Secretary has been able to persuade North Korea and Iran that they should not waste their time and treasure on nuclear weapons—after all, if they want to bring down the British Government, they need only give him a call. Or perhaps our polyglot Deputy Prime Minister has managed to negotiate with all prospective despots and promoters of state-sponsored terrorism to cut a deal of non-aggression for the next 50 years. If that is the case, I must counsel them that, in my experience, anything the Liberal leader might promise, even if it is in writing and witnessed by a Select Committee, might not actually come to pass.

The Liberal Democrats might very well know something that we do not, which might explain their relaxed stance on CASD, but we must plan and prepare for the possibility of aggression from a nuclear power, so let us consider the options. What about the middle way of a three-boat fleet? The report concludes that with only three boats there would be several unplanned, as well as planned, breaks in deployment over a given 20-year period, whereas that has not been the real-life experience of operating a four-boat fleet.

Even if we take the cited savings of approximately £3.5 billion on whole-life costs as correct, the average annual saving for the surrender of our continuous nuclear deterrent over 45 years of spending would be £78 million. As Trident and welfare are often presented as rival candidates for cuts, let us put that £78 million per year in context by comparing it with the approximately £160 billion annual cost of social security. Indeed, the total average cost, including missiles, warheads and infrastructure, of the whole shebang of a four-boat fleet would be about 1% of the non-pension welfare budget. CASD is value for money, and any alternative that is not continuous and is vulnerable to attack is neither value for money nor up to the job.

Today, I have made a light-hearted speech about a very grave subject. I have done so because I wish to persuade our coalition colleagues of the error of their arguments. In the past three years they have had a steep learning curve in the realities of power. On the evidence of their current antics, they have at least one more lesson to learn: the first duty of a Government, of any colour or combination of colours, is to protect the United Kingdom from these dread weapons. I urge them to do so.