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Armed Forces: Nuclear Deterrent

My Lords, I start by declaring my interests. I work for an American defence contractor, Curtis-Wright. I also work for Leafield Engineering, a small defence company in Corsham. I echo the remarks of my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford that we need a credible deterrent. He went on to say that we should be doing everything we can to enforce the non-proliferation treaty. In view of the number of states that have become nuclear weapon states, I am afraid that I do not share his optimism. I think that the genie has come out of the bottle and I do not think it will be possible to put it back in again. I would make a rather gloomy forecast that, in 10 years’ time, there will be more nuclear weapon states than there are today. That is why it is even more important that we have a credible deterrent. I share my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s worries about affordability. I would also like to pay great tribute to the extremely good speech from the noble Lord, Lord Owen. The Government are making the commitment that no conventional capability will be threatened by the whole idea of having a nuclear deterrent. I do not think that that bears inspection. The cost of the nuclear programme has never previously been separately identified in the defence budget, and we know that there has been a very difficult relationship over the past few years between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence. I suspect that it will all get merged in together. I am concerned that the Minister said that the cost of this is £15 billion to £20 billion over 15 years. As has already been said, the Government’s record on major construction programmes has not been great. One thinks of the Dome, the Scottish Parliament building and the Olympic Games, all of which seem to vastly exceed the original estimate. I am sure that the Minister will say that that has nothing to do with defence. But what about the Astute submarine programme? The Astute submarine was a relatively bog-standard submarine compared with Trident or a Trident replacement. The cost of that has escalated massively as well. As we have gone through a long period of not developing nuclear weapons, we will have to rebuild a quite massive skills base if we are going eventually to be in the business of building a replacement for Trident. I thought that the Prime Minister’s remarks were pretty cool when he said that we should now be looking at significant increases in the defence budget. As the Minister pointed out earlier, however, we have actually seen an increase in 1.4 per cent a year in real terms, which I do not call significant at all. During that time, the Prime Minister has committed us to wars in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. I do not believe that the costs of those wars have been met. I would very much like to know whether the cost of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fully funded by the Treasury. If the answer to that is yes, it certainly does not tie in with what I have heard from our Armed Forces. When we come to plan defence expenditure in future, it is optimistic to think that we will see significant increases in defence expenditure. Against that backdrop, we have seriously to consider the affordability of a massive programme such as this. As was said earlier, we need to see a capability to fight wars on two fronts at the same time—a capability that we have now, or are trying to meet now. To fulfil what we are doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan, we need more infantry than we have now; we need close air support; we need armoured vehicles, which we do not have—some are coming on stream but it is taking time—and we need heavy lift helicopters. All this is very expensive to find, but as the noble Lord, Lord Owen, said, it does make the difference between whether our soldiers live or die. I think that this is absolutely critical. At the moment we are cursed with the problem of trying to pay for the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft—which I have to admit was ordered under a Conservative Government, but at a much earlier time, for a conflict which we are not at all threatened by now. However, that is a massive expenditure which is making it extremely difficult to pay for the things that we actually need to conduct the wars that we are involved in in Iraq and Afghanistan. If one believes the press speculation, there is serious concern over whether the two carriers which are supposed to be coming through are going to happen at all. In the short term, the Treasury has a serious problem. It has massive borrowings to try to reduce, and the public expenditure growth rate for which it will be paying will probably be slowed considerably. Against that backdrop, it is difficult to see increases in defence expenditure. I do not think it is going to happen; indeed, I do not think it would happen under a Government of any colour. The priorities of schools and hospitals always seem to be far greater than those of defence in the world in which we live today. I hope that the Government will look seriously at cheaper alternatives. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, made the point about cruise missiles. I do not understand why they have been written off as a very expensive option. While you would have to design a special nuclear warhead to fit on the missiles, enormous sums would be saved because you would not have to build new submarines to fire them. That is because we are firing conventional cruise missiles from conventional hunter-killer submarines today. Therefore I cannot believe that it would not be a much cheaper option. When I raised this point with the Leader of the House, she was advised by her noble friend the Defence Minister that cruise missiles can be shot down. I felt a bit winged by that so I talked to some American friends of mine who actually designed the Tomahawk cruise missile and asked whether it is possible to shoot these things down. Perhaps the Defence Minister was thinking back to the time of the Gulf War when the missiles were extremely basic. The only way to guide them to their targets in Baghdad was by taking them down a street and turning right at the traffic lights. The Iraqis quickly got on to that and set up anti-aircraft guns to shoot them down. Today cruise missiles fly in under the radar. They are then taken to high altitudes and can be brought down at any point of the compass straight onto the target. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, pointed out that they are extremely accurate because at the last minute television cameras are used to guide them to their target. So I do not accept that we have seriously considered the cheaper option of putting a nuclear warhead on to a cruise missile. Moreover, as has been discussed, the technology of the missiles will continue to improve and their weaponry will get ever more sophisticated. I sympathise with noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches because I am not sure that the question of extending the life expectancy of the Trident fleet has been fully explored. There is just too much differing opinion on this to accept the rather cavalier dismissal that we cannot look at Trident going on for 15 years longer than was originally anticipated. If that were the case, again we would see the technology improving as well. Therefore I have deep reservations and concerns about spending the vast sums of money being talked about because I do not think these plans will be separately funded by the Treasury, rather it will be our troops on the front line who pay the price.