Mr. Mohammad Sarwar (Glasgow, Central) (Lab): I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this important debate. In the past three months, I have received hundreds of campaign postcards, letters and e-mails that are against the replacement of Trident. To date, I have not received a single letter in support of its replacement. That is a clear indication of the strength of public opinion in my home city of Glasgow and in Scotland against the replacement programme.
I am unconvinced about the massive cost of replacement. In particular, I have great reservations about the accuracy of figures provided to date. Government sources previously quoted Trident’s running costs at between 2 and 4 per cent. of the annual defence budget—approximately £1 billion per year. That has been revised upward to 5 to 6 per cent. in the White Paper by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. There must now be doubts over whether the global cost figure offered of £15 billion to £20 billion is accurate. Ministry of Defence procurement has a history of exceeding initial budgets. The contract for the new Astute class submarine has already doubled, before a single ship has been launched. Some observers have even put the cost for the full life of Trident’s replacement as more realistically between £76 billion and £110 billion.
The factor of fear and uncertainty has been a strong element in the arguments of those supporting a new system. People in Glasgow understood that at the height of the cold war. Given Faslane’s strategic importance and the US Navy base at Holy Loch, we felt the real threat posed by Soviet missiles targeted on Scotland. Times have changed. The cold war threat from the Soviet Union no longer exists and therefore the need for new nuclear weapons does not exist.
If we and other countries that have nuclear weapons pursue new nuclear weapons systems, the likelihood of proliferation and of nuclear threats will increase for many years to come. The Prime Minister’s argument that nuclear weapons are vital to our national security can, and is likely to be, adopted by other current non-nuclear states worldwide. That view is supported by Kofi Annan, who said at the 60th anniversary of the United Nations that the more those states that already have nuclear weapons increase their arsenals, or insist that such weapons are essential to their national security, the more other states feel they too must have them for their security. Therefore, failure to prioritise real international disarmament negotiations in the near future will only contribute to the ongoing problem of proliferation.
Lord Kinnock, who ended our party’s commitment to unilateral disarmament, has said that the Government have failed to make the political, technical or military case for enhancing Britain’s weapon system. He is right. The Government have not made the case for the need to replace Trident and for that decision to be made now.
I want to ask right hon. and hon. Members one question: why do we believe that it is right for Britain, the United States of America and Israel to possess weapons of mass destruction and expand their nuclear weapons arsenals, but that it is not right for other nations to develop nuclear weapons? Is it because we have more wisdom, because we are more reponsible or because we are a rich nation? If we spent the billions of pounds that we are spending on war and our nuclear arsenal on alleviating poverty, we would live in a safer world.
