The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-14089, in the name of Christina McKelvie, on extra spending on the home of nuclear submarines. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
I invite members who are leaving the chamber to do so quickly and quietly, and I would further invite members of the public who are leaving the public gallery also to please leave quickly and quietly.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with concern the announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that £500 million will be spent on ensuring the continuation of HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane as a nuclear submarine base for the next generation of Trident nuclear weapons; understands that this announcement comes before the UK Parliament has made a decision on this next generation of nuclear weapons; considers that money such as this would be far better spent on supporting many in society including people who are sick or disabled, young people and pensioners in constituencies such as Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, where those in vulnerable positions have been so negatively affected by welfare reforms that have been continued by the current UK Government and the previous UK coalition administration; believes that this continued move toward a next generation of nuclear weapons is at odds with the beliefs of the majority of the Scottish population and elected members, and hopes that sense can be seen that will result in investment in people instead of these weapons of mass destruction.
12:34
There are some issues in this world that are far too big for party politics. Immigration and the protection of refugees is one; world poverty is another. International terrorism is another one, as is religious extremism. I am sure that members can give many more examples.
What about nuclear weapons? What about Trident renewal, and £100 billion wasted on having the capacity to wipe out half the world at the push of a button? By taking a stand on immoral and abhorrent weapons of mass destruction, we in Scotland are making a global statement.
Only one political party is clearly and unequivocally dedicated to stopping Trident renewal. That is the Scottish National Party—[Interruption.] Okay, I should not forget my friends the Greens. Of course, because we are part of the United Kingdom family of nations, we are not allowed the right to say no to renewal.
All the weaponry is sitting in the estuary behind our largest city. We can hardly be surprised that 80 per cent of Scottish people do not want it to be replaced.
In the Scottish Parliament, members have repeatedly and conclusively voiced their opposition. I understand that three members on the Opposition benches—Neil Findlay, Elaine Smith and Malcolm Chisholm—signed the motion, because they, too, want investment in people instead of weapons of mass destruction. I commend them for their integrity and their willingness to rise above the political mudslinging that remains the background to this debate.
When are you going to join us?
You always let the side down, don’t you, Neil?
Meanwhile, Westminster’s welfare cuts risk putting up to 100,000 more children in Scotland into poverty by 2020. The Child Poverty Action Group has estimated that Scotland’s child poverty level will increase by between 50,000 and 100,000 by 2020 as a result of the UK Government’s tax and benefits policies.
Within the UK, Scotland is part of an increasingly unequal society, with far too many people trapped in poverty and prevented from releasing their full potential. The UK ranks 28th out of 34 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on a measure of overall inequality. In an academic study to compare the earnings of the worst off and best off, Dorling found that the UK is the fourth most unequal nation among the world’s richest countries.
I am a lifelong supporter of nuclear disarmament, and I do not want Trident to be reinvented or reinstalled anywhere else in the UK or beyond. However, I firmly believe that the people who live in the area closest to such a weapon of mass destruction should have some voice over whether they are happy to have it there.
Are people happy that mammoth vehicles drive around Glasgow’s main roads under cover of darkness, with attached risks that are terrifying? William McNeilly, a Royal Navy submariner, got himself into serious trouble in May when he said that the nuclear deterrent is a “disaster waiting to happen” and cited 70 safety lapses in the transportation of nuclear warheads between July 2007 and December 2012. Those included trucks suddenly losing power, suffering brake failures and breaking down, as well as trucks getting lost, being driven the wrong way up a motorway and losing communication.
This week we heard George Osborne style himself as Bob the Builder. I think that he is the kind of builder that we see on television programs such as “Rogue Traders” or “Cowboy Builders”—those builders who promise the best but produce shoddy workmanship at an inflated price.
Let us consider what £500 million would build in Scotland. How would members feel about having about 63 new primary schools, 20 new secondary schools or 20 new community hospitals? Jobs would be created for planners and architects, builders and labourers and the people in the local cafes and sandwich shops who would feed the workforce. The increased tax take from the jobs would boost not just the local but the national economy.
Of course, for £500 million we could get an extra 1,350 teachers or maybe 1,650 newly-trained nurses in our hospitals. What do we get for £500 million from Mr Bob the Builder Osborne? Well, we get some tarmac and a higher fence, to protect not jobs or people but an immoral arsenal of weapons of mass murder.
How can anyone justify having the power to wipe out half the world? Why is that a useful attribute to have? The real threats to world peace come from extremist terrorists as in 9/11, from the apparently irreconcilable divide between Israel and Palestine that has led to so many tragic deaths of civilian women and children in Gaza, or from the devastation wreaked in Syria by ISIS and the millions of refugees now seeking sanctuary on Europe’s shores as a result. Does anybody seriously suggest that nuclear weapons will act as a deterrent to Daesh? I do not think so.
Mr Osborne always talks about investment. Trident is just a big investment in global murder—a bigger investment than that of some of the warring factions in the middle east that we have heard about. I ask Mr Osborne: how about investing in infrastructure? What about investing in a social security system that supports and protects vulnerable people? How about ending the need for children—such as the children I saw when I spent time at the food bank in Hamilton on Saturday—to go to food banks?
I say to Osborne the builder: how about building peace in our world by taking the brave step of saying that we will not spend one more penny of taxpayers’ hard-earned money on weapons of mass murder? In this, the 70th anniversary year of the United Nations, how about building a consensus around the world that peace and diplomacy are the only way to make our world safer for us all? How about building a reputation as a fairer, greener nation that has the guts to step away from the nuclear bombs and towards disarmament? How about putting bairns before bombs?
12:41
I believe in multilateral nuclear disarmament. I do not think that anybody in the chamber or, indeed, outside it would want nuclear weapons to be used. I want all nations to give up nuclear weapons, and my ambition—which I know is shared across the chamber—is to achieve global zero. Although I absolutely respect the position of unilateralists, I do not believe that unilateral disarmament alone will trigger other nations’ reduction of their weapons.
On the detail of the motion and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement of £500 million of investment for Faslane, let us be clear that it is £50 million every year for 10 years, so it is not up-front money. It is to build ship lifts, sea walls and jetties. It is a direct consequence of the decision that the last Labour Government took to make Faslane the submarine base for the whole United Kingdom. The money is for important infrastructure to allow that to happen.
To be frank, I thought that the SNP would welcome that because, in an attempt to answer the pressing question about jobs and the local economy, its position is to come up with the notion of having the headquarters for all of the forces at Faslane. Surely infrastructure for the purpose of making Faslane the UK submarine base is welcome, because it enhances the base and creates construction jobs in the local economy.
Will Jackie Baillie give way?
Let me talk about jobs for a minute, and then I will take an intervention from the cabinet secretary.
There is much contention about numbers. The SNP deliberately downplays the figures and claims that something like 500 people are affected. I will share with the chamber the response to a freedom of information request made to the Ministry of Defence in September 2014. It said that there were 6,800 people working at Faslane at the end of August 2014. That is 300 more than I thought were there, so it is welcome indeed. On top of that, there are 4,500 in the supply chain according to standard income multipliers. That comes from an EKOS study.
There are 11,300 people employed at Faslane, and the MOD expects 2,000 more as a result of the changes, so we are talking about 13,300 jobs. I am happy to give way to the cabinet secretary, who will explain how he will replace those jobs.
I well understand that, for many years, Jackie Baillie has justified spending billions of pounds on nuclear weapons in terms of the jobs that she believes that that expenditure sustains, but is she aware of April 2015 report by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—not the Tory Government—called “Trident & Jobs”, which found that many more jobs would be created if the amounts of money spent on Trident were, instead, spent on public infrastructure?
That was interesting. I kind of expected it, because it is the default position. If the cabinet secretary was actually serious about understanding what the workforce knows—indeed, what the dogs in the street in my community know—he would know that there are far more jobs there than the figure that has been quoted.
If the SNP wants to be responsible for its actions, which is what I believe mature politics is all about, it should start by at least admitting the true scale of the job losses in that area. We are talking about the biggest single-site employer definitely in the west of Scotland and probably in all of Scotland. Indeed, more than a quarter of the West Dunbartonshire workforce is employed at Faslane in good-quality well-paid jobs.
I grant that Christina McKelvie’s speech touched briefly on jobs; she talked about teachers, schools and hospitals and about using the £500 million for those purposes. Well, it must be a very elastic sum of money, given that the new Southern general hospital cost, I believe, in excess of £900 million to build. That £500 million is not going to go very far.
What is inherently dishonest about this is the SNP saying, “We’ll take this money and use it on teachers, nurses, schools and hospitals” when the reality is that its policy position is to invest it in conventional weapons. Not one new penny would be diverted to the kinds of social projects that Christina McKelvie has talked about. The SNP is guilty of spending the money not just once or twice but perhaps 10 times over. It is also dishonest to be happy for a nuclear weapon to be moved south of the border without trying to achieve global zero.
My bottom line is that we as politicians have to be mature and responsible in our politics.
And brief.
If the SNP is going to take something away, it should at least have the courtesy to tell the local workforce where the jobs are going to come from in future.
12:47
I am pleased to contribute to the debate, but I observe in passing that it is impossible to address such a significant issue as defence in any meaningful fashion within the four minutes permitted in a members’ business debate. Let me therefore set out my observations in abbreviate form—and I should say that I do not propose to take any interventions.
I make these comments as a West Scotland member whose area includes the communities of Dumbarton, Cardross, Vale of Leven, Helensburgh, Rhu, Faslane and the Gare Loch. I have previously asked the Scottish Government about its response to the additional investment that was recently announced by the chancellor at the Faslane base, and I have to say that I am a firm supporter of the UK Government’s proposals to turn Faslane into the UK’s submarine centre of specialisation, planning ahead to secure the base’s future until at least 2067.
Strangely, what is lost in the motion is what the chancellor actually announced. The money, which amounts to £500 million over 10 years, will, as Jackie Baillie has pointed out, be spent on a number of major projects at the base including the construction of ship lifts, sea walls and jetties to allow the base to serve not only Trident and its successor but Britain’s fleet of conventional submarines, too.
I am aware that the SNP opposes nuclear weapons, but in this case that opposition is turning into something quite different. It has now become opposition to equipping our armed forces; opposition to having the best-quality facilities available for our submariners, entirely regardless of whether they are serving with nuclear or conventional weapons; and opposition to hundreds of millions of pounds of investment, securing thousands of highly skilled jobs on the Clyde, supporting numerous businesses and providing an enormous boost to the local economy in the west of Scotland. Faslane is already Scotland’s largest single-site employer, and this money will result in the 6,700 staff being expanded to 8,200. This is an asset to Scotland and one that I am sure other parts of the UK look at with envy.
I am also surprised that Ms McKelvie seems to regret that the UK Government will meet our NATO commitment to spending 2 per cent of our national income on defence. One might suppose it to be a strange opinion from a party that just over a year ago was singing the praises of NATO membership—or is it a case of the SNP once again cynically suggesting that money can be spent several times over on countless different things?
I know that, during the referendum, that was certainly where the SNP stood on Trident. The cost of the submarines, which is about 5 or 6 per cent of our defence budget, was earmarked by the SNP in the event of independence for additional spending on conventional forces, childcare, hospitals, schools, personal care, pensions, infrastructure and diplomatic missions overseas, and on combating youth unemployment, investing in colleges and providing additional social security payments. Those aspirations may be laudable, but there is nothing laudable in inflating the cost of our nuclear deterrent and pretending that getting rid of it will give access to a bottomless pit of public money.
I am pleased that the Conservative Government is meeting its targets not only on defence spending but on international development aid. It is a strong economy that enables such investment. It is positive not only for the UK’s interests but for the global reach of our armed forces and international development programmes.
The motion also points to the supposed unpopularity of the nuclear deterrent among the Scottish public. That may well be a matter of faith for Christina McKelvie and her party, but it is at odds with the evidence, with several polls finding support for the deterrent. That aside, the £500 million funding announcement is not about Trident. It is about equipping a key base for the future, for both the conventional and nuclear submarines that it will serve. We should applaud that announcement, not condemn it.
12:51
Presiding Officer, you are probably familiar with those men who are worried about their virility and buy large sports cars. I do not know whether you are one of them, Presiding Officer, but that is a case in point when talking about the people who want to renew the UK nuclear weapons system. One of those men said:
“Our independent nuclear deterrent is not independent and doesn't constitute a deterrent against anybody that we regard as an enemy. It is a waste of money”.
The comment was made by former UK Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, and he is right. He would prefer the £500 million to be spent on conventional weapons and troops. Was Michael Portillo being cynical, Annabel Goldie? I do not think so.
Another of those men and another former UK defence minister, Nick Harvey, also dismissed the argument of wider economic benefits coming from replacing Trident. He said:
“The idea that you should produce weapons of mass destruction in order to keep 1,500 jobs going in the Barrow shipyard is simply ludicrous ... Frankly you could give them all a couple of million quid and send them to the Bahamas for the rest of their lives—and you would have saved an awful lot of money.”
That should answer some of Jackie Baillie’s claims.
Those are ideas from two male former UK defence ministers on how not to spend the £500 million on Faslane. I wish that they had thought about that when they were in charge.
I like the idea of making sure that our boys and girls serving at home and abroad are well looked after. The idea of spending the rest of my life in the Bahamas is also appealing.
I thank Christina McKelvie for bringing the debate to the chamber. It is clear that we need to keep the pressure on the UK Government to stop spending our money when Westminster has yet to take the decision to renew Trident.
Last week, after Bill Kidd’s members’ business debate, we met the Austrian disarmament ambassador, Alexander Kmentt, who was instrumental in initiating the humanitarian pledge calling for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. The pledge is supported by 117 countries; that is the worldwide consensus that Christina McKelvie was talking about. We must listen to the voices from the majority of countries in the world calling for the complete prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons.
At the meeting, we heard Dr Claire Duncanson, who is a lecturer in international relations at the University of Edinburgh, explain that women being sidelined from decision making is one of the most obvious ways in which gender affects the issue.
Building on Carol Cohn’s work on the subject, Dr Duncanson highlighted how in international security debates certain dichotomies prevail, with masculine-associated terms usually being valued more highly. She illustrated her work with a story from a male member of a group of nuclear physicists, who had said, “Several colleagues and I were working on modelling counterforce nuclear attacks, trying to get realistic estimates of the number of immediate fatalities that would result from different deployments. At one point, we remodelled a particular attack, using slightly different assumptions, and found that instead of there being 36 million immediate fatalities, there would only be 30 million.” He added that everybody was sitting around the table, nodding and saying, “Oh yeah, that’s great—only 30 million,” when, all of a sudden, he realised what they were saying and blurted out, “Wait, I’ve just heard how we’re talking—only 30 million! Only 30 million human beings killed instantly?” Silence fell upon the room. Nobody said a word. They did not even look at him. Later, the physicist said how he felt at the time: “It was awful. I felt like a woman.” He was careful not to blurt out anything like that again.
That story and the words of two former UK defence ministers illustrate the role and meaning of gender discourse in the defence community.
I again thank Christina McKelvie for bringing the debate to the chamber.
12:55
I want to speak briefly on the motion, which, apparently, the newspapers and some people on social media were surprised that I had signed. Despite the fact that I have spoken at dozens of meetings on the issue over the years and in debates in the chamber and have been opposed to nuclear weapons all my political life, somehow my signing the motion came as a surprise and news to people. Just to get rid of any further doubt, I say again that I oppose nuclear weapons and I oppose the renewal of Trident. I hope that that puts that to bed.
However, I do not want to present my case in the crude party-political terms that Christina McKelvie did. I thought that her speech was thoroughly depressing. That is not how to build alliances and to bring people to the campaign; it is how to ostracise people from the campaign.
I do not know whether the member listened to what I said. Last week, we had a meeting with the Austrian ambassador about the consensus that exists across the world. I did not see the member there. He really needs to listen and to make sure that he is involved in such groups.
Maybe it is Mr Allard who needs to listen, because I was not referring to him; I was referring to Ms McKelvie. I will come to Mr Allard in a minute, because I thought that he made a much better speech than Christina McKelvie did.
Some think that we win people over in this debate by saying, “We are right and you are wrong, and if you don’t want to get rid of nuclear weapons unilaterally, you are morally inferior to me and less humane than I am, so your opinion and views are less worthy.” I appeal to anyone who takes that tone to think again, because moral superiority does not provide an engineer with a new job, nor does it keep a local shop open, and spending the Trident money dozens and dozens of times over in a crude attempt to make party-political points during a referendum or an election campaign does not keep a community alive, either.
Mr Allard was right to reference Portillo and Harvey. There are others, including former generals and Nick Brown, a former chief whip for the Labour Government, who have all come to the conclusion that we should not renew Trident. Mr Allard was right to reference them, because that is what we need to do—to build alliances of people who are not normally in the same camp to argue against the renewal of Trident. That is the way to win people over.
If we are to take with us the workforce whose jobs are threatened by what we propose, and if we are to convince the businesses in the supply chain that not renewing Trident is the right move—I believe that it is the right move—we need to put in place the replacement jobs and services to support the people who stand to lose their jobs and their communities. That is our duty and our responsibility.
I appeal to all those people who want to rid the world of nuclear weapons, whether they are multilateralists or unilateralists—after all, we are all on the same side; we simply disagree on tactics—to work together to develop further a credible and serious defence diversification plan and strategy based not on imaginary or fantasy jobs, or on throwaway lines in a debate such as today’s, but on real and genuine opportunities for the people involved. If we do that, we can take forward this argument and win it. I am absolutely convinced that we will win it, but we need to build an alliance to take the argument across society and across the political divide so that we can eradicate nuclear weapons from the world.
I want nuclear weapons to be eradicated from Scotland, from the United Kingdom and across the world. I do not want to see them sail from the Clyde to the Tyne or the Mersey or anywhere else. I want the world to be a much safer place.
At times, I despair of our politics. In recent weeks, sections of the media have decried Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for saying that he would not be willing to press the button to launch a nuclear attack that could kill millions and pollute the earth for centuries to come. Apparently not being willing to wipe out millions of our fellow human beings is something to be knocked while someone who is willing to press the button and wipe out millions of human beings is to be admired as a strong leader. Well, does that not expose the madness of our world at times? I will support someone who works for peace, justice and human rights any day. That is real leadership.
13:00
I commend Christina McKelvie for bringing the debate to the chamber.
The debate is timely in more ways than one. It is timely to highlight the money that the UK Government is prepared to put into refitting Faslane and to look at the events that have led up to today. Three weeks ago, on 19 September, the Daily Record reported “US defence send warning to Putin as Trident sub docks on Clyde armed with ballistic missiles”. That was not a UK submarine that docked in Faslane; it was a US submarine that is capable of launching 24 ballistic missiles. The Daily Record estimated that that was the first time that a US nuclear submarine had been in British waters for 10 years, but there is no guarantee that that is true because those submarines operate in secret. It is surprising that the Daily Record was able to say even that the submarine was in Faslane.
Refitting of Faslane is not just about making it the nuclear submarine base for the UK; it is also about making Faslane capable of bringing in nuclear submarines from other nations, including the USA. This week, a NATO exercise is being conducted off the west coast of Scotland, although NATO itself has said that it is not an official NATO exercise. Prince Charles visited Faslane last week to speak to the countries and services that are participating in exercise joint warrior, which brings together a number of forces as a warning to Putin and the Russians and to show them the military might that can be commanded by NATO if Russia decides to get out of line.
The reality is that nuclear weapons are being sited at Faslane and sailed into the base at Faslane from other countries. If we are serious about getting rid of nuclear weapons, we do not take the Jackie Baillie line of multilateralism. We are talking about big boys’ toys that people want to play with, own and control.
Every day in Scotland and Britain, people are facing benefit cuts and more families are finding themselves in poverty. At the same time, the UK Government is deciding to spend £50 million a year on refitting a base that is, essentially, designed to house the UK’s nuclear arsenal and, potentially, those of other countries. Our society has to be mindful of what we are trying to achieve.
It is one small step for a nation such as Scotland or the UK to remove itself from the nuclear arms race. It is a step that I am prepared to support if it means eradicating nuclear weapons from the world and safeguarding the world from future destruction, by using the money to tackle the real need of the people of the world through tackling poverty and injustice. I commend the motion and ask every member to campaign for the eradication of nuclear weapons to ensure a safer and fairer world.
13:05
I, too, thank Christina McKelvie for securing the debate. A fortnight ago, we debated Bill Kidd’s motion on the Marshall Islands and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and a number of members made compelling arguments against possession of nuclear weapons on both strategic and moral grounds. As Christina McKelvie and others have said, nuclear weapons do not make us more secure and their use would result in huge human suffering. When Jackie Baillie makes a moral argument to justify nuclear weapons, it is worth thinking about the fact that those weapons could never be used in the targeted way that some so-called smart weapons are used. Nuclear weapons do not discriminate between huge civilian populations and armies or service personnel; they are indiscriminate, which is why they are morally wrong and cannot justify the economic expenditure on them.
Today’s debate has given members an opportunity to reflect on the economic consequences of the renewal of Trident. Christina McKelvie’s motion draws a powerful contrast between the vast expense of replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system and the impacts of the UK Government’s welfare reforms on society’s most vulnerable people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced £500 million for projects at Faslane that are linked in substantial part to preparing for the introduction of the so-called Trident successor submarines—I am happy to provide evidence to anybody who doubts that fact—at a time when press reports say that the United Nations is to investigate whether the UK Government’s welfare reforms have caused grave or systematic violations of disabled people’s human rights.
As we have heard, the estimated cost of replacing the UK’s nuclear weapons runs to a staggering £100 billion in lifetime costs at 2012 prices. As was reported last year by the Trident commission—an independent cross-party inquiry that was launched by the UK Parliament in 2011—when spending reaches its peak in the next decade, taxpayers will be spending nearly £4 billion a year on nuclear weapons. The commission’s report spells out the impacts that that will have on other areas of defence spending. It is worth bearing it in mind that the cost of Trident equates to roughly a third of the entire capital budget of all three services, so it crowds out the ability to invest properly in conventional defence. The commission also stated that
“Important defence projects currently in the pipeline will surely suffer delay or cancellation”
because of that cost. Yet, as George Osborne’s announcement on 31 August of £500 million of infrastructure funding for Faslane shows, preparation continues for the next generation of nuclear-weapons carrying submarines operating from HM Naval Base Clyde into the second half of this century and beyond. It flies in the face of democracy that the UK Government is directing further funds to the future of nuclear weapons before it has put the final decision on a successor fleet to the UK Parliament.
Of course, the Scottish Government welcomes investment in Faslane as a conventional naval base. Members will be aware that we greatly respect, value and support all members of the armed forces in Scotland as well as their families and our veterans. However, alongside plans to replace Trident, the UK has seen deep cuts to its conventional forces, and we have seen disproportionate reductions in conventional forces in Scotland. People on the front line in Afghanistan are being handed their P45s while they are serving, regiments were merged by the previous Labour Government and there have been cuts in the equipment for defence forces. I am happy to hear how Jackie Baillie would defend that.
I have no intention of defending that. Let me pose a question to the cabinet secretary, because I am curious to know what the position is. I understand that his party’s policy position is to support conventional forces and weapons by diverting the money into those—that is what I heard him start to say. However, that is at odds with what Christina McKelvie said.
Not at all. Jackie Baillie has not listened to what I have said. The £500 million in expenditure that has been mentioned is being spent in preparation for the replacement of the Trident nuclear submarines at Faslane, and that is what is being objected to.
Jackie Baillie says that everybody knows the merits of her argument, including
“the dogs in the street”.
I think that the SNP MP Martin Docherty got a majority of about 10,000 in Jackie Baillie’s area at the general election—I could be wrong about the figure. I have a feeling that her area voted yes to independence. I think that the arguments about nuclear weapons were very prominent—
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
No, I will not.
Will—
I wonder whether Jackie Baillie could be quiet while I finish my speech.
Ms Baillie! The cabinet secretary is not taking an intervention.
That is a shame.
Ms Baillie, will you please be quiet?
I think that we have seen real support for spending that money much more productively. Perhaps Jackie Baillie might want to see whether she can get her colleagues in the Labour Party on side.
The debate has, inevitably, strayed into party-political areas. To go back to an earlier point, I would not condemn Jeremy Corbyn for what he said about not pressing the nuclear button—rather, I would commend him. What I would condemn—
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
No. I will just finish my point. I would condemn the Labour Party’s current position, which is to say that it would spend £100 billion on nuclear weapons but would then not use them. That is also immoral.
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
No, I will not.
Mr Findlay, Mr Brown is not taking an intervention.
The spending of that £100 billion—given the cuts that we have seen to welfare and vital services and given that the Labour Party’s position is that it would not use the weapons—is deeply immoral. On whether
“the dogs in the street”
support Jackie Baillie’s position, perhaps she should have another chat with the dogs that she has been talking to, because they might have changed their minds, if that is her position.
Of course, we expect and support proper investment in our defence services. We have seen far too many cuts to the conventional forces—cuts to equipment and personnel. We might have had a much better and more productive response to the crisis in the Mediterranean if we had had the vessels that we could have had, had we spent more money on conventional defence. There are good reasons to be cautious about the UK Government’s projections for future personnel numbers at Faslane as well, given that previous promises of a major uplift in the number of army personnel based in Scotland and of investment in the defence estate—for example, the promised new barracks at Kirknewton—have not materialised.
If the argument is about jobs, I also draw members’ attention to the April 2015 report by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that I mentioned earlier, “Trident & Jobs”, which found that more jobs would be created if the money to be spent on Trident were instead spent on other areas of public spending.
We can be in no doubt that we face huge cuts to welfare provision in Scotland, including cuts to tax credits, and we know that individuals and families in Scotland are currently experiencing the adverse consequences of welfare reform. Our analysis shows that the impact of those cuts will be felt especially by the most vulnerable people in society. That is why we have pushed for full devolution of social security to this Parliament. A more humane approach can be taken.
I thank the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention and I sincerely thank Christina McKelvie for bringing the debate to Parliament.
We heard earlier today about jobs that were being lost in areas where we look to our enterprise companies and the oil and gas task force to go in to see what they can do to help. The debate over jobs at Faslane is a serious one and it inhibits the argument for getting rid of Trident. Could we start planning now, rather than making the mistake of arguing about whether we are going to spend the money on nursing and public services or improving the traditional forces—
I think that you have made your point.
Should we not now be making that plan, just as we would if jobs were being lost in another industry, so that all the people who work at Faslane know what Faslane would look like as a conventional base?
Jean Urquhart has made a good point and I have had discussions with Scottish CND about the issue. Jean Urquhart may remember that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall fell, we were told that there was going to be a peace dividend. In fact, the Labour Party used to talk about arms conversion. We have not had that conversation and we do not have access to much of the information that is required in order to do that sensibly. We have said that we are concerned about jobs. We would safeguard the jobs that are currently at Faslane by making it Scotland’s defence base, if we had that control. However, we do not have that control. Jean Urquhart is right: we should have discussions around planning, but what is very important and what overrides that need, in my view, is the morality or otherwise of nuclear weapons.
I am very sorry that Neil Findlay’s first instinct in responding to the debate—the best that he could do—was to launch a personal, puerile and predictable attack on an SNP member.
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
The cabinet secretary is not taking any more interventions—I am the decider of that. Cabinet secretary, please come to a conclusion.
The true cost of the UK Government’s plans for a new generation of nuclear weapons is all too apparent. We call again on the UK Government to abandon those plans and instead to focus efforts and resources on strengthening our conventional defence forces and redressing the impacts of welfare reform on the most vulnerable people in society.
The Scottish Government supports Christina McKelvie’s motion.
I thank all members for taking part in this important debate.
13:15 Meeting suspended until 14:30.Previous
First Minister’s Question Time