Portillo calls for cuts in nuclear weapons

Monday, 20 June 2005 12:00 AM

Former Defence Secretary Michael Portillo is urging the Government to hold back investment in nuclear missiles.

With the arms race effectively over after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the nuclear option is no longer pressing, he argued on Sunday.

Mr Portillo said there was an economic case to be made for transferring defence spending on nukes to investment in hardware such as aircraft carriers and submarines capable of firing cruise missiles.

"The case for Britain having an independent nuclear deterrent depended on the existence of the Soviet Union," he wrote in The Sunday Times.

"None of those considerations applies today.

"Whatever residual risk may be posed by Russia's poorly managed nuclear arsenal can be handled by the United States.

"If the UK diverts billions of pounds from its future defence budgets into nuclear weapons that will never be used, it will have less money to spend on useful things such as aircraft carriers and submarines that fire cruise missiles."

Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Dr John Reid told ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby Britain would retain "the minimum nuclear deterrent" for the foreseeable future.

In the past five years, he said, "we have reduced the number of warheads, we have de-targeted the Trident boats, we've reduced the number of boats at sea on nuclear weapons, we got rid of our free-fall nuclear bombs.

"While others have nuclear weapons we have said we will retain the minimum nuclear deterrent."

A decision on whether to replace the Trident nuclear missile system is due within three or four years.

Tags: