Author: CND
Date: 16 May 2011
Type: News
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Ministers are set to give the go-ahead to the next stage of the replacement of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system this week, yet figures released to an MP show that rather than the original estimate of £11-14bn, the bill for new submarines is expected to come in at around £26bn.

scrap trident Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said “Trident is a ruinously expensive white elephant that the country can ill afford. Yet the government seems willing to pay whatever it costs to get their hands on an updated version. Yet these are weapons designed to fight the Cold War that ended a generation ago. The Liberal Democrats in the coalition may have delayed some decisions, but have ultimately crumbled under the pressure, allowing the development of the ‘like-for-like’ Trident replacement they pledged to oppose. The billions that will now be squandered on the next phase of Trident are funds that will be unavailable for combating real threats to Britain’s security and the cost increase of this project will cause even deeper cuts to public services by other departments. How many more billions are to be poured into these vanity projects which have no military use other than triggering armageddon?”

The new figures were revealed in a response to Katy Clark MP, when Defence Equipment Minister Peter Luff described the costs of the two planning phases expected before a final decision (‘main gate’) is taken in 2016: “The combined cost of the Concept Phase, totaling approximately £900m, and the Assessment Phase, totaling approximately £3bn at outturn prices, is consistent with the departmental guidance that programmes should spend approximately 15% of the total costs before Main Gate.”

If the combined cost of the Concept and Assessment phases – £3.9bn – is 15% of the total, that would give an outturn cost for the submarines of £26bn. The original MoD cost estimate, using prices as they were in 2006 was of £11-14bn being required for the submarines. Inflation as felt by the general economy would only be expected to have added £1-2bn to costs in that time.

Ministers have also stated they will not release the growth in costs required by the decision to go ahead with a new untested reactor design (PWR3) after having ruled out using the existing reactor or an upgraded variant of it (PWR2 and PWR2b). Campaigners have consistently called for greater transparency and in this case there can be no question of security or commercial reasons for ministers telling MPs “We will provide a description and revised cost estimate of the selected design in the initial gate parliamentary report, but not for those designs that have been rejected.” ^[1]

Noting the changed circumstances after the Scottish elections, Kate Hudson said “Scotland is expected to host these nuclear weapon submarines just 40 miles from Glasgow. Yet with an avowedly anti-nuclear government in Edinburgh keen to push for independence, that option may well become impossible long before these boats are finished. Unless ministers are willing to throw billions more at the project to create bases elsewhere to host them, Britain could end up with nuclear submarines, but no base from which to operate them. We can stop this madness now, and join the overwhelming majority of countries who are secure and prosperous, yet nuclear weapon free.”