The Tories risk playing ‘petty, grubby’ politics by planning to delay the Commons vote on Trident renewal, former head of the Navy Lord West has warned Coffee House.
A group of former senior military figures, ex-ministers and MPs are writing to David Cameron and George Osborne next week to urge them to push ahead with the votes on the ’main gate’ decision on the new submarines as soon as possible, after reports that the Conservatives were planning to delay until closer to Labour’s autumn conference. David Cameron this week said ‘we should have the vote when we need to have the vote and that is exactly what we will do’, which suggested he wasn’t trying to create a sense of urgency about the matter.
Lord West, one of the letter’s signatories, told Coffee House that the Tories needed to get on with the vote, not least because the government has already spent or committed around £4 billion on the development of the Successor submarines. He said:
‘If they believe in it so fundamentally – it was in their manifesto – they should go ahead and get on with it. The British public will actually look at this and think well here they are, they are just playing political games, they don’t really care about this, they are playing politics. Little petty grubby politics with something that they have said themselves is crucial for our national security, we should get ahead with it, and I find it actually deeply disillusioning, I must say I am quite shocked.
‘I would have thought they would have been bigger than that. Labour has got enough trouble anyway. But to do this, I think it’s absolutely pathetic, I mean it might be very amusing, but the safety of our nation must be more important than petty politics and I’ve been very pleased that large numbers of Tory peers in the Lords support my views.’
Former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Robertson is co-ordinating the letter, which will also include former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Mike Jackson. Robertson said:
‘They need to get this out of the way. It is not very convincing to spin that they have got to build up a consensus. There will be people who will suspect that politics has been played, I would hope that it’s not the case. It really is of crucial national importance. There needs to be certainty about the programme’.
Julian Lewis, the Tory chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee, has also urged ministers to do the ‘statesmanlike’ thing and hold the vote as soon as possible, asking two questions on the matter this week. The Tories had initially been tempted by the prospect of causing Scottish Labour pain in the run-up to the Holyrood elections with a vote in March, but are now planning to delay it until at least after the EU referendum, which is expected to take place in late June.
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