from Sunday Herald, 17 June 2012
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is secretly worried that the Scottish National Party (SNP) could jeopardise the UK’s nuclear weapons programme, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
In an internal report summarising the main risks to Westminster’s plans to keep submarine-launched, nuclear-tipped Trident missiles on the Clyde, the MoD describes the SNP’s anti-nuclear stance as a “potential threat”. Lawyers and UK ministers will need to be mobilised in response, the report says.
The SNP government at Holyrood has hit back by reiterating its promise to get rid of Trident through independence. And anti-nuclear groups say that the future of Trident is now in the balance.
Trident missiles are carried by four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines stationed at the Faslane naval base on Gareloch. Up to 220 nuclear warheads are either loaded on the submarines or stored at the high-security armaments depot at nearby Coulport on Loch Long.
The SNP’s long-standing policy, backed by the Scottish Parliament, has been to try and remove the missiles from the Clyde. Launching the Yes campaign for the independence referendum last month, the SNP leader and First Minister, Alex Salmond, promised to defend Scotland “without the obscenity of nuclear weapons”.
The MoD has not admitted before to taking the SNP’s opposition seriously. But an internal “risk register” drawn up by senior defence officials points out that the MoD will need to comply with Scottish planning law when renewing the nuclear weapons facilities at Faslane.
"SNP have suggested that they will exploit environmental legislation against basing Trident in Scotland," summarises the MoD report. "Potential threat to continued deterrent operations and support from Faslane/Coulport.”
In order to “mitigate” this, the MoD says it will need "engagement of Scottish legal expertise to advise on issues and strategy". It also promises to “ensure continued ministerial and cross-Whitehall engagement on the political issue.”
One example of such political engagement came last week, when UK defence ministers warned that Scotland might have to help meet the “gargantuan” costs of removing Trident. Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat armed forces minister, suggested that Faslane could become an English military stronghold in Scotland, similar to the US’s Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
The MoD released its comments on the SNP last week because it was ordered to do so by the UK Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, after an appeal by anti-nuclear campaigners. The risk register is dated October 2009, but is still believed to be current.
Peter Burt from the Nuclear Information Service, the group that obtained the register, argued that it was “far from guaranteed” that the Trident would ever be replaced. “The MoD is clearly concerned about the costs of the programme and worried that its contractors won't be able to deliver the new submarines,” he said.
“We now know that ministers in London have been talking to their lawyers and planning to soft-soap Scotland's political leaders to prevent the Scottish government from scuppering Trident.”
An independent Scotland would be the “death knell” for Trident, Burt maintained. But even if Scotland didn’t vote for independence, it could still stymie the nuclear weapons programme, he suggested.
“Devo-max and even the current devolved arrangements could allow the Scottish government plenty of opportunity to ruin London's ambitions for developing new nuclear weapons,” he said.
The Scottish government stressed that independence was the best way of getting rid of Trident. “While the Scottish government and devolved parliament are strongly opposed to Trident nuclear weapons,” said a government spokesman, “independence is the only constitutional option which gives Scotland the powers to have Trident removed from Scottish waters.”
The MoD reiterated that that the UK government is committed to maintaining a continuous submarine-based nuclear deterrent. “There are no plans to move the deterrent from HM Naval Base Clyde,” said an MoD spokesman.
“The Defence Nuclear Executive Board’s risk register identifies any potential issue that may have implications for the UK’s nuclear deterrent and it is only right the MoD considers what mitigations might be appropriate.”
The comments the Ministry of Defence was ordered to release can be downloaded here (144KB pdf). The Sunday Herald's editorial about Trident is here.
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