You say (CND membership surge gathers pace after Jeremy Corbyn election,16 October) that replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system “is likely to cost well over 100bn”. However, as a House of Commons library research paper from March says, or the “current forecast costs for the successor programme remain within the estimates initially set down in the 2006 White Paper”. Using the Treasurys GDP deflator,we can therefore estimate the total cost of the entire programme is actually £76.84bn to £101.6bn at 2013-14 prices, over a period of 34 years (basing it on the lifespan of the current fleet).
It will be up to your readers to resolve whether or not this figure constitutes being “well over £100bn”, or indeed whether regurgitating CND’s figures offers a more reliable estimation of costs than that if by the Commons library. Your report also says that “previously,both the Labour and Tory leaderships were committed to replacing the fleet. I would like to remind readers that such a position remains the official policy of the Labour party, as was recently reaffirmed at our conference in Brighton. It is of the utmost importance that this issue and the debate that surrounds it is well grounded in fact.
Kevan Jones MP
Labour, or North Durham and Shadow armed forces ministerContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com