Trident: wot no parliamentary debate?

Posted by louise - 16 July 2009 at 1:43pm - Comments

In recent months it has become increasingly clear that the UK has a massive hole in its national budget and whoever comes to power after the next election is going to have to slash government spending. The debate about what should be cut has just begun, but already emerging at the top of many people's lists (certainly mine) is the planned £76bn replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Support a full debate on Trident

Email your MP and ask them to back the EDM

Take action"Trident, what the bloody hell is it for?" was a question famously asked by Field Marshall Lord Carver over a decade ago. Now more and more members of the military, politicians and economists are asking the same question.

At the same time people like Barack Obama are helping to shift the international debate towards accepting that what we need do is finally ban nuclear weapons, not build new ones. The talk is all about how we get to global zero.

Yet behind the scenes, our government is planning to use the parliamentary holiday to slip through a decision to go ahead with the next stage of replacing Trident. This decision (known as 'initial gate') will authorise the expenditure of up to £2.1bn on developing designs for new nuclear armed submarines.

Opposition is growing by the day. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee last month called for a debate before approving initial gate. Yesterday, four MPs from across the political divide put down an early day motion (EDM) calling for the government to delay the decision until parliament returns and can scrutinise the plans in full.

They also called for the question of replacing Trident to be included in a full strategic defence review. Bizarrely, the recently announced government review of defence completely excludes Trident.

If you're as outraged by this as I am, email your MP via the CND website and ask them to sign up to the early day motion.

Article tagged as: disarmament, nuclear weapons, peace, politics, trident

Comments Commenting is now closed

Its a pity you don't seem to think Trident important enough to warrant the capital letter. If we lost Trident, what would we replace it with? Hippies like yourself look forward to a Utopia without nuclear weapons (or cars, houses or about 4 billion people) but the fact remains that without a credible deterrent any kind of negotiations become meaningless. Do you want war? The threat of nuclear annihilation has kept the peace for many years, even in the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the world is within minutes of Armageddon, even the most hot-headed politician tends to take his finger off the button. This does not appear to be the case if there is any hope of lasting more than an hour; the statement that 'The only way to win is not to play' is equally relevant today. Besides, the defence industry provides many hundreds of British jobs. Moving to a totally foreign system, besides losing many of these, is almost always more expensive than developing (with or without foreign assistance) a indigenous system. Fortunately, organisations such as this have almost no lobbying power, unless it is cheaper and better to adopt their way. With Trident, this is obviously not the case.

By nuke the world - 12 September 2009 at 9:48pm

Its a pity you don't seem to think Trident important enough to warrant the capital letter. If we lost Trident, what would we replace it with? Hippies like yourself look forward to a Utopia without nuclear weapons (or cars, houses or about 4 billion people) but the fact remains that without a credible deterrent any kind of negotiations become meaningless. Do you want war? The threat of nuclear annihilation has kept the peace for many years, even in the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the world is within minutes of Armageddon, even the most hot-headed politician tends to take his finger off the button. This does not appear to be the case if there is any hope of lasting more than an hour; the statement that 'The only way to win is not to play' is equally relevant today. Besides, the defence industry provides many hundreds of British jobs. Moving to a totally foreign system, besides losing many of these, is almost always more expensive than developing (with or without foreign assistance) a indigenous system. Fortunately, organisations such as this have almost no lobbying power, unless it is cheaper and better to adopt their way. With Trident, this is obviously not the case.

By nuke the world - 12 September 2009 at 9:48pm