Trident Renewal — House of Commons, 2015-01-20
Topic: Defense
David Jonathan Edwards (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Many of the founding fathers of my party fought in the first world war. It was their experiences of pointless human destruction that led them to base their political beliefs on the importance of Welsh national political identity, to counteract the imperialism of the great powers of the day. Wales lost more soldiers per head than any other nation in that war, and ever since, our party’s foreign policy has been based on building a peaceful role for Wales in the world, very much like our cousins in Ireland, who, of course, gained their independence in the aftermath of that war. While not strictly a pacifist party, our voting record in this House over nearly half a century clearly shows that we are not supportive of the aggressive foreign policy pursued by successive UK Governments and their allies. Our first MP, Gwynfor Evans, was a vocal critic in this place of the Vietnam war; my predecessor, Adam Price, endeavoured to impeach the former Prime Minister for his conduct in the build-up to the second Gulf war; and in this Parliament we have voted against military action on several occasions Fairness and social justice also lie at the heart of what our party stands for. Those principles could never be upheld if we believed that wasting billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction at a time when public services are being slashed was in any way acceptable. As we have heard several times today, Trident renewal is estimated to cost about £100 billion over the system’s lifetime, and the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), a former Defence Minister in this Parliament, said earlier that that figure was an underestimate. In my view it is obscene to suggest that this is a justifiable figure when our schools and hospitals are crying out for investment Last week, Labour and the Tories voted in favour of billions of pounds of more cuts in the next Parliament, all the while being committed to spending a similar amount on a new generation of nuclear weapons. Given the Westminster parties’ warped priorities, it is no wonder that more and more people in Wales are backing Plaid Cymru’s progressive alternative—and the Greens in England and the SNP in Scotland Owing to the sums involved in the Trident renewal programme, it is vital that this House debates whether or not it is a justifiable use of public money—and I must say that this has been a very good debate. It will be the biggest spending decision made by the next Parliament, and with an election in just over three months the electorate deserve to know where those seeking election stand on this issue When reports emerged yesterday in the Glasgow Herald that Labour was boycotting this debate, I labelled it an insult to the electorate. However, I am glad that a few Labour MPs have broken the boycott, and they have made some very valuable contributions to the debate While ahead of the May election Labour will tell people how nasty the Tories are and how it would do things differently, the reality is that it would not do much differently at all, and that it would still press ahead with wasting £100 billion on Trident despite its proclaimed supposed opposition to cuts to public services and the ideological shrinking of the state. No wonder many esteemed commentators, not least Martin Shipton of the Western Mail, are beginning to ponder that the most likely coalition after the next election will be between the Conservative party and Labour "Living within our means" was the slogan of the Conservative party and the Prime Minister last week. Bizarrely, wasting £100 billion on unnecessary nuclear weapons did not figure in his speech, but it should have. While the UK Government, and the Labour party through its voting in support of the austerity charter, are committed to reducing spending on public services to levels last seen in the 1930s as a share of GDP, and while millions of citizens are struggling to make ends meet and watch the essential public services that they depend on crumble in front of them, it is obscene that any Government could go ahead and plough £100 billion into an outdated virility symbol, as the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) described it Politics is about priorities. Rather than spending £100 billion on a weapons system that nobody in their right mind would want to use, we say invest in schools, hospitals and affordable homes, in skills and education, and in industry to rebalance the economy, all of which would represent better value for money and would be spent on what people need to improve their lives.