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BRITAIN will spend a “spiralling” £4.2 billion on replacing Trident atomic missiles even before MPs decide whether to press ahead with the scheme, Scottish campaigners warned yesterday.
A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that the initial “concept phase” of the project had cost £900 million and that the ongoing “assessment phase” would cost £3.3bn.
John Ainslie of Scottish CND said the British government was “spending eye-watering amounts of money on something which they haven’t yet decided to buy.”
SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson MP said: “Costs are spiralling out of control.”
The NAO report also revealed that the Ministry of Defence failed to anticipate the difficulty of designing a new reactor for the replacements for Trident- carrying Vanguard-class submarines.
The costs of the PWR3 reactor have risen by £151m because of a shortage of suitably qualified engineers.
Scottish Green Party co-convener Patrick Harvie MSP said the Treasury was “only too happy to grease the wheels for the renewal of an unsafe, immoral system of mass slaughter.”
