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Trident

I am pleased that you are chairing the debate, Mr Gale, and that we have secured it. I regret that it will be only 30 minutes long, but we will do our best. A number of hon. Members want to intervene during my contribution, and I will be happy to take all those interventions, including from the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who possibly will not agree with one word of what I am about to say. If he can just contain his disagreement until he reaches an appropriate point of disagreeability, I will happily give way to him. First, I should declare an interest in the debate. I am chair of the parliamentary CND group and vice-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at national level. I have to confess to having first joined CND at the age of 15, and I remain a member, so it is a very short membership that I have had. The subject of the debate is the cost of the Trident nuclear missile and submarine replacement. This is an issue of parliamentary accountability, costs and, of course, the relationship between vast levels of defence expenditure and our foreign policy. Huge numbers of figures can be cited, and I will cite some. Main-gate consideration of the replacement of the whole system has been delayed until 2016. By that stage, £4 billion will have been spent on the concept and assessment phases of the replacement submarine and £500 million on ordering long-lead construction items. Plans have recently been announced for spending of £2 billion at the warhead facility at Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston. That coincides with the suggestion in the recently available redacted value for money review that a decision will be taken on the warhead much sooner than previously anticipated. This debate is therefore designed to point out the amount of money being spent, but also to ask very serious questions about when Parliament will be effectively able to scrutinise what are massive levels of expenditure on a weapon of mass destruction.