Trident

Instead of spending billions of pounds on nuclear weapons, the SNP favours an objective, collaborative military strategy in identifying and tackling threats to security and human rights.

The cost of the next generation of Trident has been calculated at between £179billion and £205billion.  It’s wrong – strategically, morally and financially.  

• While Labour and the Tories have committed themselves to Trident, the SNP will always oppose Trident. 
• The cost of the next generation of Trident has been calculated at £179billion over its lifetime by Crispin Blunt MP, Tory Chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, while the CND have estimated it to be as high as £205billion. 
• Trident is wrong strategically, morally and financially.  The Tory obsession with Trident is an immoral and ruinous expense that can only impose death, and will never protect peace.
• In the last parliament, as promised in the 2015 manifesto, the SNP led a cross-party coalition to oppose the renewal of Trident.  
• As the UK faces new hybrid war threats the Tory government’s reliance on Trident is reckless and irresponsible. 
• SNP supports long-term investment in HMNB Faslane as a conventional military base.  

​For decades the SNP has called for the UK Government to invest in conventional forces instead of wasting billions on Trident. 

• A recently published NAO report on the MoD equipment plan reveals that in 2016-2017 the cost of building four Dreadnought subs to carry the Trident nuclear deterrent rose by £575.5million.
• The cost of the new Astute nuclear sub programme rose by £365.3million – giving a total rise of £941million in one year.
• The rising cost of Trident has forced the MoD to transfer £580million of a £10billion ring-fenced nuclear contingency fund into the project budgets.
• We in the SNP don’t want a nuclear deterrent, it’s an enormous black hole and a weapons system that makes us less safe.
• Instead we favour investing these vast sums of money in an objective, collaborative approach to identifying and tackling threats to security and human rights.  This would entail engaging with our European allies who are developing an EU-wide military and security strategy. 

Updated 10 February 2019