Tory ex-defence minister voices doubts over need for Trident replacement

James Arbuthnot says nuclear deterrence is ‘potential booby trap’ and Britain is no longer a top-tier military power

One of the Conservative party’s most influential voices on defence has conceded that Britain can no longer be regarded as a “division-one military power”, and raised questions over the sense of replacing the Trident nuclear fleet with a new generation of missile-launching submarines.

James Arbuthnot, the veteran chairman of the defence select committee and a former defence minister, told the Guardian that funding cuts over the last three years had made it impossible for the UK to retain its status in the top tier of global armed forces.

But the focus of his most startling remarks was the plan to replace Trident with four new Successor submarines, which a recent study by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) thinktank estimated would cost £70bn-£80bn to build, arm and support over their working life.

David Cameron is a staunch supporter of a like-for-like upgrade and is expected to deliver an update on the Successor programme on Monday during a visit to the Royal Navy’s nuclear base at Faslane.

Arbuthnot said his views on the subject were changing and he was no longer certain that replacing Trident was the right move. The end of the cold war and a reshaping of the threats faced by the UK had undermined the logic of nuclear deterrence strategy, he said.

“Yes, there has been a steady decline in my certainty that we are doing the right thing by replacing Trident. Nuclear deterrence does not provide the certainty that it seemed to in the past. It’s not an insurance policy, it is a potential booby trap,” he said.

Though an admirer of the professionalism of Britain’s armed forces, Arbuthnot said the cuts in defence spending and the loss of thousands of soldiers, sailors and aircrews since the 2010 strategic defence and security review had diminished the British military. More than 30,000 jobs have been axed, and the army is being reduced by a fifth.

The MP said he was concerned that the link “between the people in the country … and their armed forces is, at best, tenuous”.

“I don’t think that we are a division-one military power any more,” he said. “I think we have very important attributes. We have some of the best armed forces in the world and some of the best equipment. But when you have a regular army of 82,000, it would be quite impossible to suggest that we are still a division-one military power.”

Successive defence secretaries have insisted the UK still has the world’s fourth largest defence budget, but Arbuthnot suggested this statistic was misleading.

“The size of the defence budget does not reflect the size of the armed forces. It reflects the quality and capability the armed forces possess, in terms of training and equipment, which are outstanding. But the footprint of our military forces across the country is tiny,” he said.

“The understanding of the armed forces is fragile. The defence budget is unlikely …read more