Danny Alexander
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Trident Alternatives Review
Danny Alexander Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Trident Alternatives Review.
Thank you, Mr Speaker; I shall certainly do as you say. I will also tailor the number of interventions I take to meet your invocation.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister published the Trident alternatives review—the most thorough review of nuclear weapon systems and postures that the UK has undertaken for decades, and the most comprehensive analysis ever made public. For the first time in a generation—
Danny Alexander
I will make some progress before giving way.
For the first time in a generation, the Trident alternatives review shows that there are credible and viable alternatives to the United Kingdom’s current approach to nuclear deterrence. A different approach would allow the UK to contribute meaningfully to the new multilateral drive for disarmament initiated by President Obama, while maintaining our national security and our ultimate insurance policy against future threats.
Danny Alexander
I will take some interventions later, but in the light of what Mr Speaker has said, I will make some progress.
A different approach could allow long-term savings—about £4 billion over the life of the system—to be made against current plans. Let me be clear: this does not change current Government policy to maintain Britain’s nuclear deterrent and prepare for a successor system. It does mean that we can at last have an open and much more informed debate about what our nuclear weapons are for and how they should be deployed—a debate that provides our country with a chance to change course before the main-gate decision for a successor system is taken in 2016.
Dr Julian Lewis
I am grateful to the Chief Secretary for giving way. He says this is the most comprehensive examination for many years—that is open to question—but will he explain why it considered only the four-boat and three-boat options for Trident, not the two-boat options that the Liberal Democrats plan to put to their conference as Liberal Democrat policy?
Danny Alexander
My hon. Friend will have a chance to see the proposed Liberal Democrat policy paper when it is published in a few weeks’ time. The purpose of this debate is to consider the Trident alternatives review.
Caroline Lucas
On the review’s comprehensive nature, does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that a review that fails even to consider the option of not replacing Trident at all and having no nuclear submarines is ultimately flawed? Decades after the cold war and in the midst of austerity, the key question that has to be asked is whether Britain needs a nuclear submarine system that will cost us £100 billion over the next 30 years.
Danny Alexander
That is of course a legitimate point for political debate, but the purpose of the review was to consider alternative nuclear weapon systems that could act as a deterrent. The review was never designed to consider the option of unilateral disarmament, although the hon. Lady is free to argue for that.
Mr Ainsworth
If this was the most comprehensive examination of our nuclear weapons system in a generation, why did the right hon. Gentleman not take evidence from individuals outside government?
Danny Alexander
It was a review conducted within government, taking advice from senior officials, as with every other government review. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman has been involved in such reviews in the past, and I am sure he knows better.
Mr Ellwood
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for coming to the Chamber today. He says this is the most comprehensive review we have had. That is open to question, but is he saying that after a two-year study we still do not know what the Liberal Democrat position is on this important subject?
Danny Alexander
I am here to set out the details of the review. Those are the terms of the debate today. I will set out my own views in the course of my speech, if my hon. Friend will allow me time to get on with it.
Danny Alexander
I will, however, give way to the Chairman of the Select Committee first.
Mr Arbuthnot
I am grateful to the Chief Secretary. I am trying to take this document seriously, but I am having some difficulty, not least because of the removal by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister of the excellent Liberal Democrat Minister from the Ministry of Defence, which shows something of his party’s attitude towards defence. Does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury accept that his policy would destroy the submarine building industry of this country?
Danny Alexander
No, I certainly do not accept that, but I join my right hon. Friend in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), who made an enormous contribution to this review.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
I very much appreciate the Chief Secretary to the Treasury giving way. Further to the point on the submarine building industry, and in relation to the £4 billion saving that he has just mentioned, does he accept that chart 2 on page 42 of the document includes the platform, the missile, the infrastructure, the warhead and the policy change costs, but does not include the cost of bringing forward the next submarine project to plug the gap in the Barrow shipyard’s order book? That omission could cripple submarine building in this country for ever.
Danny Alexander
One of the review’s assumptions is that we would wish to maintain our sovereign submarine building capability. That is the policy of the Government and it sounds as though it is the hon. Gentleman’s policy, too—[Interruption.] If hon. Members will calm down for a second, I will tell them that it does include the cost of maintaining that capability. All the alternatives include the procurement of further submarines after the successor.
As the House knows, the review was commissioned by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, initially with my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon as the Minister in charge. My hon. Friend deserves a huge share of the credit for this work. It has been taken forward under the auspices of the Cabinet Office, with a cross-government team of expert civilian and military officials. I should like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work.
During my visits to Aldermaston, Faslane and Coulport as part of the review, I had the privilege of meeting many of the submariners of the Royal Navy, as well as the scientists, engineers and other civilians who support them. They are some of Britain’s hidden heroes, often unsung, who operate at the limits of human understanding. Seeing them in action also gives me confidence that if the next Government were to change their mission, they would deliver it just as effectively, and in the most efficient and credible way. The review will provide the opportunity to do that.
As I said in response to an earlier intervention, it is also important to be clear what the review was not about. First, it was not about short-term savings to help to deal with the current deficit. It is possible under some of the options that savings against current plans would start to accrue from the mid-2020s, but this is not about back-filling budgets in the next Parliament. As I also said earlier, the review has not addressed the question of whether the UK should remain a nuclear weapon power, because complete unilateral disarmament is not the policy of either the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats—or, indeed, of Labour. The review did not seek to address the question of whether we should possess nuclear weapons. However, the scale and posture of our nuclear weapon capability can change.
Mr Baron
Many of us who believe that a continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent is absolutely essential, and that anything else involves living in cloud cuckoo land, also believe that we should honour those who were in at the very beginning of our nuclear arms age—the British nuclear test veterans. The British Nuclear Test Veterans Association and many parliamentarians from both sides of the House have come together to campaign for recognition for the veterans. We have written to the Prime Minister and had meetings with Ministers. Will the Government look again at the campaign, because we rank very lowly on the international table of decency on this issue—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman’s intervention has gone on for too long.
Danny Alexander
I certainly hear the point my hon. Friend is making. The veterans clearly played an important role in the development of the deterrent, and I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who is going to reply to the debate, will be able to add something more on that in his comments.
The review was tasked to answer three questions. First, are there credible alternatives to submarine-based deterrence; secondly, are there credible submarine-based alternatives to the current proposal; and, thirdly, are there alternative nuclear postures that could maintain credibility? The review has been thorough, detailed, extensive and objective. The analysis looks in detail at specific combinations of platform, delivery vehicle and warhead design, but excludes technologies that could not be ready by 2035. Variants of the current successor programme are included.
As for alternative platforms, the review considered large aircraft, combat jets, surface ships and multiple types of submarine, including those with a dual role. As for alternative delivery systems, the final analysis was focused on two types of potential future cruise missile—a subsonic stealthy cruise missile and a supersonic cruise missile, each carrying one warhead. Warhead design issues were considered and were important in the review.
An assessment of our ability to deliver alternative options showed that producing the warhead and its integration into a cruise missile or bomb would be the critical challenge. The reality is that the UK nuclear warhead programme is highly optimised around producing and maintaining warheads for the Trident missile. The review found that moving towards an alternative would add technical, financial and schedule risk to the programme. Delivering a warhead for an alternative system would therefore take at least 24 years—deliverable with some risk by about 2040. The crucial point is that the review judged this warhead time scale to be longer than the Vanguard submarines can safely be operated for. There are, of course, options to bridge the gap, but when we look at the cost of alternative systems, it becomes clear that each cruise missile-based option includes an extra £10 billion on its price tag because of the need to bridge the gap.
The bottom line is this, and I quote from the review:
“The analysis has shown that there are alternatives to Trident that would enable the UK to be capable of inflicting significant damage such that most potential adversaries around the world would be deterred.”
The analysis shows that cruise missile-based options are militarily credible, but, because of the gap, my conclusion is that a replacement nuclear deterrent based on the current Trident system is the most cost-effective for the period we are considering.
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way and I welcome his conclusion on submarines, but will he accept that continuous-at-sea deterrence is rather like pregnancy—nature admits of no middle position?
Danny Alexander
I will come to that, but I do not accept the point; that may be an accurate description of pregnancy, but not of deterrent postures.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I want to come back to the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the threat. Does he agree with President Obama who said in Prague that
“the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up”?
Danny Alexander
I agree with many of the things President Obama has said, including in his recent Berlin speech. I would point the hon. Lady, however, to the Government’s own threat assessment in the strategic security and defence review, which says that state-on-state nuclear attacks are a tier 2 threat. I will come to the threat analysis in a moment.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
This is the nub of matter. That is just one threat assessment, but no serious conflict with which this country has been involved over decades—extending even to the second world war—has been expected. Wars are unexpected, so why does the right hon. Gentleman rest any assurance on a single threat assessment? How does he know that that threat assessment will not have to be changed in a few days’ time, let alone in 10 or 20 years?
Danny Alexander
I will address that point as I move through my speech, although I am glad to have taken my hon. Friend’s intervention. All I would say is that the degree of readiness of our conventional weapons and forces is scaled to the threats of the time, and my precise proposal is that we could adopt a similar approach here.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
In assessing the contribution of President Obama to this debate, will my right hon. Friend take into account the fact that the United States is intending to reduce its fleet of submarines carrying Trident missiles from 18 to 12, and that the Berlin speech was the second time that President Obama has argued very strongly for multilateral nuclear disarmament?
Danny Alexander
I entirely agree. I applaud President Obama’s leadership of the disarmament debate. I think that the review gives the United Kingdom an opportunity to contribute further both to disarmament and to the global movement towards the de-alerting of our nuclear weapons.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Danny Alexander
No, I will not. I will give way later, but I want to make some progress first.
The review presents a much greater opportunity for change and the consideration of alternative postures, and that in turn presents the possibility of maintaining our nuclear deterrent capability with fewer submarines. This is where the real opportunity resides for making long-term savings, for recalibrating our policy to the requirements of our ages, and—as we just heard from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell)—for contributing to nuclear disarmament.
Analysis of the national security strategy confirms the position adopted by successive Governments that
“no state currently has both the intent and the capability to threaten the independence or integrity of the UK. But we cannot dismiss the possibility that a major direct nuclear threat to the UK might re-emerge.”
With no hostile backdrop and a surprise attack against the UK highly unlikely, the United Kingdom could adopt a number of viable and credible alternative postures while maintaining a nuclear deterrence capability that meets the needs of national security.
The review demonstrates that our current nuclear posture of continuous-at-sea deterrence is not the only one available. Let me briefly describe four of the alternative postures that were considered in the review, from highest to lowest readiness. Each of them represents a different rung on the nuclear ladder, with CASD at the top.
A posture of focused deterrence would maintain a continuous nuclear deterrent for a specific period in response to a specific threat. At all other times, the system could adopt a reduced readiness level. We considered three options for reduced readiness. A so-called sustained-deterrence posture would mean regular patrols that maintained deterrence capability, but the number of platforms could be reduced. A responsive posture would allow gaps of irregular frequency and length between deployment, so that a potential adversary could not predict when and for how long a gap in deployment might occur. A posture of preserved deterrence would hold forces at low readiness. Under preserved deterrence, no platforms would be regularly deployed, but the UK would maintain the ability to deploy if the context changed.
The review clearly demonstrates that the concept of a ladder of nuclear capability and readiness is viable and credible, and that there are a number of options for taking steps down the rungs without getting off altogether.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Danny Alexander
I will happily give way after I have made a bit more progress.
According to the review’s description of alternative postures, those options could include operating fewer Vanguard submarines, ending CASD for less frequent patrols, and unarmed patrols.
Of course, coming down the ladder depends on judgments that we make about future threats and our legal and international obligations. I should make it clear that adopting a non-continuous posture means accepting a different calculation of risk from that which existed during the cold war. However, I consider it imperative for us to update our calculation of risk. If CASD is an insurance policy, we are paying too high a premium for our needs.
Danny Alexander
I am going to make some more progress.
The 2010 national security strategy considers state-on-state nuclear war to be a second-tier threat. The argument that a current adversary would take the opportunity to target the UK during a period when no boat is covertly deployed and to launch an overwhelming nuclear strike against Britain is not supported by any analysis that I have seen.
Danny Alexander
I am going to make some progress—oh, I am sorry. I will give way to the former Defence Secretary.
Danny Alexander
As my right hon. Friend will know, the first question is a matter of political judgment for the Government of the day. As for the second, it would depend on which of the alternative postures was adopted. They would all be designed to allow us to surge back to the so-called focused deterrence, which would sustain a continuous posture in response to our needs.
The reality is that in the current circumstances, and for the foreseeable future, the ultimate guarantee does not need to sit on a hair trigger. We can afford to go much further in de-alerting our nuclear deterrent. The option of non-continuous deterrence does not threaten current security, and by changing postures we can reduce cost at the same time. For example, ending CASD and procuring one fewer successor submarine would make a saving of about £4 billion over the life of the system.
Jeremy Corbyn
May I put a simple question to the right hon. Gentleman? In what circumstances would he envisage the use of nuclear weapons, and the problems that would follow as a result of their use?
Danny Alexander
The whole purpose of nuclear deterrents is to deter their use.
The judgment must be made about where on the ladder we believe that it is credible to stand, provided that the ability to scale up or down as threats change and the momentum of proliferation on the one hand and disarmament on the other shift. As a recognised nuclear weapon state under the non-proliferation treaty, we have an obligation to move towards a world in which nuclear weapons are no longer part of state security and defence postures. It is true that Britain has made significant steps since the cold war in disarmament terms. Some would argue that Britain has done its bit for disarmament and we have reached the minimum level possible. That argument has been deployed at every point at which we have scaled down over the past 20 years, but each time it has proven not to be true. The next step down the ladder is to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in our defence policy itself, which means accepting that a cold-war-style continuous deterrent has become unnecessary.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
If the right hon. Gentleman accepts that the UK will have a non-continuous deterrent, it means that there will be times when the UK does not have an active deterrent. Why then did he rule out the option, at least, of not continuing with the deterrent programme at all?
Danny Alexander
I do not accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question and I have answered the substance of it in answer to an earlier intervention.
David T. C. Davies
Surely we either have a full-time deterrent or we do not. If we do not have one, we might as well stand as high as we possibly can on the ladder so that our enemies can see the white flag that we will need to wave at them.
Danny Alexander
I am afraid that my hon. Friend has clearly not been listening to the analysis or read the review. Just last month, in Berlin, President Obama called for movement beyond the “cold war nuclear postures” and announced a major reduction in the US nuclear arsenal. It is my hope that in the next Parliament the UK will answer that call with a serious consideration of ending continuous nuclear deterrence.
The review is the most comprehensive study on nuclear weapon platforms and postures ever published by the UK Government. I believe that as large numbers of nuclear weapons remain and the risk of proliferation continues, it is right that the UK retains a nuclear capability for as long as the global security situation makes that necessary. But I also believe that that capability should be scaled and deployed to meet the threat we face now, and held as a contingency to deal with the threats we may face in the future. We should seek to balance the costs of this insurance policy against the other needs of defence and, indeed, other priorities across government.
The conclusion I draw from the Trident alternatives review is that although alternatives exist, there is no new system available before the lives of the current Vanguard submarines come to an end to meet those criteria. But a step down the ladder is available: ending 24-hour patrols when we do not need them and procuring fewer successor submarines, moving on from an outdated cold war concept of deterrence to one fit for the world we inhabit now. For the remainder of this Parliament the coalition Government’s policy will remain exactly as set out in the strategic defence and security review. We will maintain the deterrent as it is, and preparations for a successor system will continue. But the final main-gate decision on whether to proceed with a like-for-like replacement of Trident will be made in 2016, after the next general election. It is therefore up to the different political parties in this House to decide the positions they will take before that time. For the country, I hope that the publication of this review will mark the start of a national debate on one of the most profound questions of our time, and I commend the Trident alternatives review to the House.
Mr Jones
As my right hon. Friend reminds me, we also consulted on the issue and did not conduct our review behind closed doors, as was the case with this one.
We also believe that the best way to deliver the nuclear deterrent is through a continuous-at-sea deterrent. The review does not appear to suggest anything to the contrary. In fact, it reinforces our point.
Mr Jones
The Chief Secretary asks how much longer I have left. It is taking time to get through the nonsense he has come up with, but I will draw my remarks to a conclusion. I know that this is not very comfortable for the Chief Secretary, but he is going to have to sit there and listen.