Hansard

The effect and benefit of having a nuclear deterrent cannot be quantified in terms of cost. A nuclear deterrent is something that our country needs, not only to provide a deterrent but to provide the protection to our people that we have provided in the past and which we should continue to provide in the future.

The SNP constantly claims to stand up for Scotland, but voters do not agree with the SNP on this issue. Poll after poll show that more people favour the retention of the nuclear deterrent. The latest poll found that 53 per cent support the retention of nuclear weapons, with only 37 per cent saying that the UK should give them up completely. Is it now the SNP’s position that those Scots who support the retention of nuclear weapons do not care for vulnerable people?

The motion refers to the cost of replacing the nuclear deterrent. Even if the lifetime cost of replacing it is £167 billion over 32 years, that is still only 6 per cent of the annual defence budget, and that budget accounts for only 5 per cent of UK public spending. Over the same period, spending on welfare is likely to be around £7,000 billion—welfare accounts for 29 per cent of UK public spending. By the SNP’s own benchmark for how much money is spent on something, the UK Government is certainly choosing welfare over warfare.

That is only the start of the SNP’s misdirection over this issue. The SNP has a fantasy shopping list on which to spend all the savings from scrapping Trident. Here are just a few examples from that list. The First Minister wants to spend all the money on extra nurses, teachers, schools and hospitals—and then spend it again, this time on tackling child poverty and increasing the welfare budget. Alex Salmond wants to spend it on our colleges, presumably to reinstate some of the 150,000 part-time places that the SNP has slashed. The money has been earmarked by Christine Grahame and Joan McAlpine for job creation, by Alex Neil for health and education, by Christina McKelvie for nurses and teachers, by Bill Kidd for welfare, by George Adam for school building and by Kenny Gibson for further defence spending.

The truth is that scrapping Trident will not save anywhere near as much as the SNP claims. For a start, the £167 billion figure stated in the motion is not based on any consideration of the actual cost of replacing Trident; it is calculated by presuming that spending on defence will be maintained at 2 per cent of gross domestic product and that spending on Trident will be 6 per cent of that, which is the current figure. The figure is dependent not so much on the cost of replacing the nuclear deterrent as on economic growth and defence spending elsewhere. It is wrong to think that the cost of Trident will rise simply because the UK’s economy is growing or because defence spending continues to increase, because the reality is that we do not currently know the cost of replacement, because the research and development work on the new system has yet to be completed.

We all want a world without nuclear weapons, but the SNP has failed to explain how unilateral disarmament—much less just kicking Trident down the road to England—would achieve that. What evidence is there that if we get rid of our nuclear weapons, others will get rid of theirs? Would the French give up their nuclear weapons? Would the Russians? Would a rogue state halt its efforts to obtain nuclear warheads simply because the SNP got its way? The truth is that by unilaterally getting rid of our nuclear deterrent, we would severely damage the UK’s national security and might even encourage other states to acquire their own nuclear weapons as a consequence.

While the SNP cynically uses Trident as a political football, the Labour Party cannot decide what its position on Trident is. Labour’s pro-Trident Scottish leader is not backed by her own party, and its anti-Trident UK leader was not allowed to debate the issue at the UK Labour Party conference. The SNP’s position on Trident is cynical; the Labour Party’s is simply muddled.

I move amendment S4M-14681.1, to leave out from “notes” to end and insert:

“recognises the UK’s commitment to reduce nuclear arms and support global disarmament; agrees that the first priority of any government is to defend its people and that, in an increasingly dangerous world, having a nuclear deterrent protects against both foreseen and unforeseen threats; notes that the forecast cost of replacing the nuclear deterrent remains at between £18.6 and £24.8 billion for the overall programme and an annual running cost of £2 to £2.3 billion a year, which, spread across the lifetime of Trident, represents an annual insurance premium of around 0.13% of total UK Government spending; regrets that, by trying to present the debate over Trident as a simple choice between nuclear weapons and providing welfare, the Scottish Government is behaving in a cynical way, which insults the majority of Scots who favour the replacement of the UK’s nuclear deterrent; notes that it has been the UK Labour Party’s position for decades that Britain needs a credible independent nuclear deterrent, according to the shadow defence secretary, and suggests that the Scottish Labour Party should decide what its position is on the future of the UK’s nuclear deterrent.”