Britain’s nuclear spending soars amid defence cuts

Secret MoD report reveals £750m bill for enriched uranium plant as Liam Fox announces axing of 1,100 navy personnel Government spending on Britain’s nuclear weapons programme is defying the swingeing budget cuts being experienced across Whitehall. As the Ministry of Defence cuts frontline positions in the military, a previously confidential report reveals that the taxpayer is committed to paying almost £750m for the construction of a new enriched-uranium facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire. The 32-page MoD report, Defence Equipment & Support … UK Enriched Uranium (EU) Capability Investment Appraisal , spells out the taxpayer’s commitment to funding Project Pegasus, which will replace the enriched-uranium facility built at the site in the 1950s. The report, marked “Secret UK Eyes Only”, was published in heavily redacted form earlier this year following freedom of information requests. The Information Commissioner recently ruled that the redaction, hiding the full £747m investment cost of the project, should now be made public. The huge sum, signed off with little parliamentary scrutiny, has raised questions over the accountability of AWE to the taxpayer and the MoD’s priorities. Last week, after announcing that 1,100 naval positions would but cut, the defence secretary Liam Fox attacked how the previous government had run the MoD, allowing “a department of that size to operate without controls on its spending”. However, while all armed forces are suffering cuts, the UK’s nuclear weapons programme is benefiting from significant increases in spending, even before the government makes a decision on replacing Trident, the ballistic nuclear missile system. The investment in AWE will benefit AWE Management, the private-sector consortium that has a 25-year non-revokable contract to run the base and comprises US operators Lockheed Martin and Jacobs and the UK’s Serco. The money being spent on Project Pegasus is in addition to the £500m allocated for Project Mensa at nearby AWE Burghfield that will improve its warhead assembly facilities. But there are concerns about how the money is being spent. The MoD’s annual report recently revealed that the government has written off £120m spent on Project Hydrus, a plan to build a new hydrodynamics research facility at AWE Aldermaston. The project received planning permission in September 2010 but was cancelled shortly afterwards when the UK and France signed a joint treaty to construct a shared research facility. The accounts also revealed that the MoD has written off a further £16m following cancellation of a project to construct a “Systems Engineering Facility”. Total expenditure at AWE between 2008 and 2011 is about £2.6bn. The MoD believes the reinvestment programme at AWE is vital to maintain the safety and effectiveness of the current Trident warhead stockpile without recourse to nuclear testing, in compliance with the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. But the costs associated with the various construction projects give an insight into the scale of the “behind the scenes” spending that will be needed to replace Trident. The initial business case for Trident, published by the government earlier this year, gave a price for replacing the submarines of £25bn. But this does not include the costs of paying for the missiles, warheads, infrastructure or decommissioning costs. Neither does it include the continuing year-on-year costs of operating the system. Greenpeace estimates a “cradle-to-grave” operating cost for the Trident replacement project of £97bn. MoD spending on “big ticket” items came in for criticism last week by the respected defence thinktank, Rusi. It warned that there continues to be a risk the MoD’s budget plans could be “blown off course” if the cost of major programmes increases more sharply than planned. “The costs of major projects remain a major source of potential instability, with particular concerns over the looming costs of Trident renewal,” the report’s author, Professor Malcolm Chalmers, claimed. “Pressures to bear down on unit costs will continue to be difficult to reconcile with a diminishing number of front-line capabilities, each of which involves significant overhead expenditure.” Peter Burt of the Nuclear Information Service said the huge sums being spent on secretive projects at AWE bases should be a concern to the taxpayer: “The inescapable conclusion is that the Atomic Weapons Establishment has not been delivering value for money to taxpayers in years past.” But an MoD spokeswoman defended the investment at AWE: “This funding, which includes Project Pegasus, was announced six years ago and will ensure we maintain our commitment to providing our vital nuclear deterrent. It is necessary to invest in the facilities at AWE, which will provide assurance that the existing Trident warhead stockpile is reliable and safe.” Ministry of Defence Trident Military Defence policy Liam Fox Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk

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