SNP EXPOSE SOARING COST OF “COMPLETELY USELESS” TRIDENT.

SNP EXPOSE SOARING COST OF “COMPLETELY USELESS” TRIDENT.

MAINTENANCE WILL SOAR TO £1.5BN OVER NEXT DECADE

Parliamentary Questions tabled by SNP Westminster leader and Defence spokesperson, Angus Robertson MP, have revealed the cost of maintaining Trident nuclear submarines will soar to £1.5bn over the next ten years.

This year alone Trident cost £95million to maintain – with that annual total set to increase by £66million, or 70 per cent, by 2014. The revelations come following the intervention of a group of retired senior military officers, who branded the Trident system “completely useless” and challenged the renewal of the nuclear deterrent.

Mr Robertson said:

”In the current economic climate the soaring cost of maintaining Trident is simply obscene.

”This year alone Trident cost £95million to maintain, with that annual total set to increase by £66million by 2014 – enough to pay for three quarters of the new Forth Crossing.

”It is the height of irresponsibility for Gordon Brown to keep throwing money away on a nuclear fleet described just this week as ‘completely useless’ and ‘irrelevant’.

”Trident should be scrapped, and any notion of building a "son of Trident", which would cost at least £25 billion, should similarly be consigned to the scrapheap.

"Instead of building new nuclear systems to be dumped on the Clyde, the UK Government should take the lead in calling for an end to nuclear weapons by bringing an end to this shameful waste of resources."