UK considers downgrading nuclear arsenal and scrapping Moscow Criterion

ARMED forces minister Nick Harvey is conducting a government review exploring whether Britain could downgrade its nuclear arsenal, it was revealed yesterday.

Mr Harvey’s review will consider whether £20 billion plans to rebuild the Trident-based deterrent at Faslane on the Clyde should be replaced with a cheaper, more flexible nuclear option – but one which lacks the same range and firepower.

Mr Harvey, a Liberal Democrat, has refused to speak publicly about his review, but yesterday his party colleague Menzies Campbell suggested Lib Dem policy is turning towards abandoning the so-called “Moscow Criterion” on which UK nuclear weapons policy has been based for the past four decades.

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The Moscow Criterion is the military doctrine which states that the UK would have the nuclear capability to overwhelm the air defences, government, military command centre and capital city of Britain’s Cold War opponent.

Mr Campbell yesterday said the Moscow Criterion had been “undermined” by the end of the Cold War, arguing: “It is unthinkable today that Britain would want to use a weapon that would have the effect of obliterating Moscow, or indeed any other city.

“The idea that we would want to impose casualties to that extent simply isn’t sensible.”

Rejection of the Criterion would open the door to the possibility of Trident being replaced by less powerful nuclear warheads, to be carried on the Royal Navy’s Astute class submarine, a vessel that is already entering service and also based at Faslane.

That move would be opposed by traditional Conservatives who believe that replacing Trident is the only way to ensure that the UK has an effective deterrent. But the new approach would allow the Lib Dems to adopt a defence policy that is distinct from the Tories at the next election.

The Lib Dems’ approach was attacked by SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson MP.

He said: “Nuclear weapons, regardless of their configuration, are still weapons of mass destruction. This is about face-saving by the Liberal Democrats as it dawns on them that they are getting nothing out of the coalition.”

Thomas Docherty, the Dunfermline and West Fife Labour MP and a member of the Commons defence select committee, said: “Any deterrent must be credible and any suggestion that the Lib Dems are trying to come to some sort of political fudge to produce a deterrent on the cheap that is not fit for purpose would be a shocking abdication of responsibility.”

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One defence expert said that, if the plan to install warheads on Astute class submarines was put in place instead of Trident, it was likely that nuclear weapons would remain at the Faslane base.

Professor Malcolm Chalmers of defence think-tank the Royal United Services Institute said: “When people talk about Astute with cruise missiles, they are still talking about nuclear warheads, so you still have to have a Coulport-type facility for safety reasons.”

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