Liam Fox reopens Trident budget row with George Osborne
Defence secretary says conversation about who is going to pay for replacement for nuclear weapons system is still ongoing
- guardian.co.uk,
Friday 13 August 2010 13.38 BST - Article history
Trident nuclear submarine HMS Vengeance at Faslane. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
The battle over who will pay for Britain's new nuclear weapons system intensified today after defence secretary Liam Fox reopened his row with the Treasury.
In a move that is likely to anger the chancellor, George Osborne,
who attempted to draw a line under the dispute last month, Fox said the
conversation about who will stump up the £20bn to replace Trident "is constantly ongoing".
"Ultimately
all our defence capabilities have to be paid for. Which bits are paid,
over what timescale, is part of the discussions we are having and I'm
not going to entertain them in public. I have enough time entertaining
them in private," he said.
Fox's comments are part of an
escalating dispute between the defence secretary and the chancellor
over who should pay for a replacement nuclear weapons system. Last
month in a sign of the Tory leadership's growing impatience
with Fox, Downing Street sources said the defence secretary had been
embarking on "freelance" missions, and Osborne insisted there could be
no special accountancy exemptions for the defence budget.
"The
Trident costs, I have made it absolutely clear, are part of the defence
budget," said Osborne. "All budgets have pressure. I don't think
there's anything particularly unique about the Ministry of Defence."
Osborne
is due to outline the tightest spending squeeze in a generation in
October and Fox made his latest comments on Trident as he set out a his
vision for a restructured MoD.
Speaking at the Royal Institution
of Chartered Surveyors, Fox – who has just returned from his second
visit to Afghanistan as defence secretary – said departmental running
costs could be cut by up to 25%, adding that the department would be
reorganised into three pillars: policy and strategy, the armed forces,
and procurement and estates.
He said there would also need to be
a "cultural shift that will see a leaner and less centralised
organisation combined with devolved processes which carry greater
accountability and transparency".
Fox announced that a defence
reform unit was being set up under Lord Levene to guide the "hard
thinking" and complement the ongoing strategic defence and security
review. Levene will work with the permanent secretary, the chief of the
defence staff and service chiefs to find ways of devolving greater
responsibility for the running of the services themselves.
"We
need to review all our current practices to ensure that we are using
our greatest asset – our people – to the best of their ability," Fox
said.
The defence secretary also indicated that the number of senior military officers and civil servants would be reduced to help tackle the £37bn black hole in the department's finances.
"We
will ... consider whether the current senior rank structure across the
services is appropriate for the post-SDSR [strategic defence and
security review] world. We cannot demand efficiency from the lower
ranks while exempting those at the top."
The ongoing SDSR must
"put the cold war to bed" and concentrate on future dangers to the UK
rather than the threats of the past, he said.
In the modern world
the "moral climate" demands precision weapons and battles are
increasingly waged in cyberspace and using unmanned vehicles like
aerial drones, he added.
Fox said alongside the review his
department would be restructured and decentralised, with top brass
given more control over running their own services although he ruled
out any merger of the Royal Navy, Army and RAF.
The MoD faces
having its £36.9bn annual budget slashed by between 10% and 20% as part
of massive Whitehall funding cuts ordered by the coalition.
The
strategic defence and security review is looking at all options as it
assesses Britain's future defence needs, apart from the question of
whether to replace the Trident nuclear deterrent, which is already a
government commitment. The results of the SDSR will be announced at the
end of October.
Comments