George Osborne has told the Ministry of Defence that it will be responsible for the cost of replacing Trident – so the capital costs cannot be paid outside the defence budget – as has been the case in the past – leaving just the running costs within the defence spend.
During the election we said that you cannot make a decision about Trident outside the Strategic Defence Review, and our position was therefore, that Trident should be considered along with all other military options. Whilst we did not manage to get that built into the coalition agreement, we did get agreement to a value for money review.
If the Ministry of Defence is to be made to pay for the full replacement of Trident within its budgets, it strengthens the case for the like-for-like replacement of Trident to be part of the Strategic Defence Review. It simply does not make sense to take on such a huge financial commitment as Trident without considering other military priorities.
