Letter from the HCDC Liaison Officer,
Ministry of Defence, to the Clerk of the Committee
Thank you for your letter of 26 July, which
set out the Committee's intention this autumn to consider further
how it will examine issues surrounding the decision on a replacement
for the present nuclear deterrent. In your letter, you requested
a memorandum setting out what work the MoD and other Government
Departments are doing to inform this decision and sought answers
to a number of specific questions. I am writing to explain how
the MoD intends to meet this request.
As the Government has made clear on a number
of occasions since the beginning of this Parliament, no decisions
on any replacement for the Trident system have been taken, either
in principle or detail. Whilst some decisions are likely to be
necessary in the current Parliament, they are still some way off.
Indeed Ministers have not yet begun to consider the range of options
that might be available. Whilst work has started in Government
to begin the process of preparing for future Ministerial decisions,
this work by officials is still at a very early stage and no advice
has been presented to Ministers. It will take considerable time
before this work generates a detailed understanding of the relative
costs and capabilities of different options. We shall let you
have information on these matters in due course, and will seek
to be as open as possible.
An initial memorandum is in preparation which
will respond to the questions relating to maintaining the effectiveness
of the current system, including on our investment plans at the
Atomic Weapons Establishment. I envisage we will forward this
at the end of October.
I hope that this letter will give you a sense
of the current status of the work that is in hand and the limited
maturity of the information that has so far been drawn together.
I regret that at this stage we are unable to respond in greater
detail to the Committee's request for information.
26 September 2005
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