tridentreplacement.net

Conservatives source
John Gough, Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Barrow & Furness responded to claims made by Labour that the Conservatives are not committed to replacing Trident and instead would seek to extend the life of the current submarines.

 
Mr Gough said:
“Frankly I am surprised that John Woodcock has the nerve to bring this up in a week which has seen further evidence of Labour’s mismanagement of the defence budget, with 20% of infantry troops unfit for active service and threats to the production schedule of the ‘Astutes’.
Mr Woodcock claims just serve to highlight the fact he appears to know little about the successor programme, and indeed his attempts to ‘sex up’ this ‘evidence’ shows a complete misunderstanding of defence procurement and the need to align our programme with the US.
Firstly, the current UK successor programme is ahead of its US counterpart from whom we buy vital components as well as the missiles themselves. This is why the start of the delivery of the first of the successor boats has a planning window between 2024 and 2029. The current Vanguard boats are planned to start decommissioning in 2024 when the first reaches the end of its service life. The two programmes need to be aligned and there is a risk there could be a gap between the first of the current Vanguards decommissioning and first of the new boats coming in service. This gap would need to be filled through a Ship Life Extension Programme (SLEP) on a current boat until the new boats come on stream, or we will not be able to maintain a continuous seaborne deterrent. The life of the current boats has already been extended by five years (from 2019 to 2024) and work is apparently already underway in the MOD to consider the feasibility of a further five year extension, should the need arise. Mr Woodcock will find this is common practice in the Royal Navy, and is purely driven by the need to align the UK programme with the US programme, although it would have the added benefit of helping to plug the procurement funding gap. Indeed similar SLEP’s could be needed on the current Trafalgar class SSNs should the Astute programme be slowed down. Would Mr Woodcock rather the submarines were built early but without vital components?
Secondly, senior Tories, David Cameron, William Hague, George Osborne and Liam Fox have reiterated our support for the successor programme with the boats built in Barrow. This was re-affirmed by David Cameron at the launch of our National Security Green Paper (page 13: Some Fundamental Continuities) on Friday 15th January 2010, which states “The Conservative Party is committed to retaining Britain’s minimum strategic nuclear deterrent because, in an uncertain and volatile world, we believe it remains indispensable for our country’s national security. We support the decision to renew Britain’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent based on the Trident missile system.”This restates our policy to expressly exclude the maintenance of the nuclear deterrent from the Strategic Defence Review, and means that on this vital issue the two parties are in agreement.
Thirdly, David said that all programmes need to be reviewed to ensure ‘value for money’. Is Mr Woodcock seriously suggesting that we should not ensure that taxpayer’s money is well spent?
Finally, as Mr Woodcock is fond of quoting ‘the Times’ from last September, perhaps he would like to comment on an article from the same paper on the 22nd September when it was reported that ‘Labour may be backing away from plans to replace Trident and senior government figures predict that the pledge will be struck from the party’s election manifesto next year.’
The phrase people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones springs to mind.
Once more I offer Mr Woodcock the opportunity to acknowledge that on this issue there is cross party agreement and stop spreading nonsense because some issues are more important than petty political point scoring. Instead we could move onto debating the issues where we do disagree, for example the fact we will maintain spending on the NHS but Labour have not given the same undertaking. ”
 
Link to ‘A Resilient Nation. National Security Green Paper’: