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Meeting of the Parliament 20 March 2013

20 Mar 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Trident

Brown, Keith SNP Clackmannanshire and Dunblane Watch on SPTV

For the benefit of Mr Rennie’s education, I point out that the Scottish National Party’s whole raison d’être is self-determination. It is for individual countries to take their own view on nuclear weapons but we believe that we can set a lead by eliminating such weapons from our country. That is our role.

We will get the chance later to hear from Bill Kidd, who I believe was the only UK parliamentarian to attend earlier this month a major international conference in Oslo on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. He and others will wish to make their own points, but I feel that in debating these issues we must never lose sight of the truly devastating consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. We must be absolutely clear that these are weapons of mass destruction; they are indiscriminate and kill and destroy without grace or favour; and they devastate not just all military targets in their path but all civilians including children, all schools and hospitals, and all livestock and crops.

On this point, at least, I agree with the former UK Secretary of State for Defence Des Browne who, writing in The Telegraph on 5 February, said that

“large-scale use of nuclear weapons ... would be suicidal”

and that

“even a small-scale nuclear exchange ... would affect at least a billion people and usher in colder temperatures than at any time in the past millennium.”

I also highlight the February 2013 report from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament entitled “If Britain fired Trident—The humanitarian consequences of a nuclear attack by a Trident submarine on Moscow”, which sets out in horrifying detail the devastating humanitarian consequences of a nuclear attack on a large urban area—precisely the type of attack that Trident is designed to deliver. I note in passing that the Conservative amendment seeks to delete any reference in the motion to the devastating impact of nuclear weapons. It is clear that a nuclear attack would have catastrophic humanitarian consequences.

There is also an economic case to make in this argument. I have talked about the human cost of nuclear weapons, which is clearly far and away the most important factor, but there is also an unacceptable financial cost. The UK Government keeps the accounting on Trident confidential, but estimates suggest that running costs amount to around £2 billion per annum, with Scotland’s share estimated at around £163 million per annum or almost £500,000 each and every day. Furthermore, the UK Government’s plan to replace the current Trident fleet is projected to cost around £20 billion to build, with costs running to more than £100 billion over its lifetime. Although it is not due to decide on the plan until 2016, the Ministry of Defence estimates that it will spend around £3 billion for and in advance of that decision. Frankly, it is staggering that the UK Government is preparing to spend massive sums on nuclear weapons while at the same time cutting conventional defence forces and slashing social welfare budgets.

That is not just the view of the Scottish Government. On 22 January this year, Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute said:

“sharp increases in spending on Trident renewal in the early 2020s seem set to mean further years of austerity for conventional equipment plans.”

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Meeting of the Parliament 20 March 2013

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