Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 12 Rhagfyr 1973.
I am sure that some hon. Members are grateful for the opportunity to debate some of the defence issues which formerly attracted our attention only in the spring, when the Defence White Paper and the Defence Votes A are before the House. I welcome the proposals of the Procedure Committee that defence debates should be spread throughout the Session. I hope that the Expenditure Committee's Defence and External Affairs Subcommittee, of which I have the honour to be chairman, and all the papers that we have seen, can play a part in providing extra information for discussion on these occasions.
It is a great pleasure to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden). He is a very valuable member of my sub-committee. Because the matter worries my subcommittee, I endorse what the hon. Gentleman said about training being separated between the Services. We feel that economies could be made by training being brought together to a greater extent.
Perhaps the most important report prepared by the sub-committee last Session was on the nuclear weapons programme. We found it impossible to produce a definitive report or to make recommendations for the future because, perhaps understandably, the Government were unable to provide, even on a classified basis, the estimated time scales and costs of the various possible successor weapon systems to Polaris which are likely to become available. We tried to assess the current effectiveness of Britain's nuclear deterrent and to review the options open to the Government in purchasing a possible future system.
That report was published in August. Judging by the enormous Press conference that we had and all the comments in the Press, it caused a great deal of interest. Even I was asked to go on television and to speak about it. It seems that a decision will need to be taken by 1977, when the long re-fits and, therefore, possible conversion of the Polaris boats could begin. We felt—unanimously, I think—that the penetration ability of the present Polaris fleet and missiles, even limited to the current number of four boats, was adequate provided that measures were taken to lessen the future vulnerability of the boats to antisubmarine warfare.
The sub-committee was surprised to learn that no estimates of the cost of possible successor systems to Polaris, such as Poseidon, ULMS 1 and Trident, were available. From our visit earlier this year to the United States we know that the cost of these systems is great compared with what we spent on Polaris and that these systems would make heavy demands on our defence budget.
Polaris was and still is an extremely cheap deterrent, for which we owe so much to our American allies. A conversion programme of the Polaris boats to carry Poseidon missiles, without purchasing any missiles, is likely to cost more than the total capital cost to us of Polaris. As the range and penetration ability of Poseidon is only marginally superior to that of Polaris, we did not consider such a cost to be worth while. The subcommittee also fear that to convert to Poseidon might be so expensive as to prevent Britain leapfrogging and buying a later missile system. The most expensive Trident system, already estimated by the United States as costing £560 million per boat, has just been given the go-ahead by the United States Congress. I was surprised when I heard of this decision, because when we were in the United States last March there was considerable opposition to this great cost.
We consider that Polaris is a very cost-effective deterrent. The experiences of the French, still without an effective underwater deterrent after great expenditure, indicate the price of going it alone. I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the nuclear installation at Apt last spring. I felt that a static nuclear deterrent site is far less effective, and would prove so, than a boat. I hope that if the Government consider it necessary to supersede Polaris they will put before the subcommittee the costs of the various options open to Britain.
We got much valuable information during our visit to Ottawa and Washington. We were much impressed by the quality and quantity of the information available to all members of Congress. Defence matters are more openly discussed in Washington than they are in London. The Congress committees concerned with defence have greater access to information and greater freedom to publish the information which they receive. The most important material published includes the unit costs of ships, aircraft, weapons and equipment, and changes in those costs. In a report following our visit we recommended that the Secretary of State should continue to supply our sub-committee with classified material and particularly unit costs of major procurement programmes. We have very good relations with the Department, and we hope that we shall not be disappointed on this score.