The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has welcomed a report into the Strategic Defence and Security Review by the House of Commons Defence Committee which condemns the “startling rapidity” of the process and the lack of consultation undertaken by the Ministry of Defence.
The MPs also criticise ministers’ decision to formally exclude Trident from the review when “in practice, this decision seems to put the issue of Trident renewal into the SDSR without making this explicit, which unhelpfully reduces the transparency of the process.”
CND general secretary Kate Hudson said: “The Defence Committee rightly criticises the bizarre decision to exclude Trident from the review. It is a nonsense to undertake a once-a-decade strategic review but to exclude the single most expensive programme – Trident replacement – from it. In reality, the Treasury decision that Trident should be paid for out of the MoD main budget means everything in the SDSR is dependent on the Trident decision. Billions spent on a new generation of nuclear weapons are billions made unavailable for frontline units, aircraft carriers or cybersecurity.”
She added: “We are told British forces are fighting ‘for democracy’ yet the public have no way of feeding in to the decisions being taken with our cash. As Nick Clegg said only last month: ‘It is going to be difficult for someone who is going to receive less housing benefit because of the changes we are introducing to understand why at the same time we should spend huge, huge sums of money in a hurry on replacing Trident in full.’ We couldn’t agree more.
“This half-baked defence review could have offered a chance for the coalition to engage the millions of people who feel let down by the foreign wars that have been launched in their name. Sadly, it seems the deafness of the MoD continues.”
