first day's debate

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Defence – in the House of Commons at 4:39 pm on 12 June 1985.

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Mr. Davies:

I am sorry that I raised this matter. That intervention was wholly irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. I thought that we would have a fairly serious debate on the Defence Estimates and the White Paper, and the point I am trying to make is that Trident costs vastly more than Polaris.

We have been told several times that although Tornado cost more than Trident the Government managed to pay for that. But Tornado was never paid for out of a zero growth defence budget. At the time when money was spent on the Tornado aircraft, we did not have a zero growth defence budget. Had that been attempted, there would have been the horrible problems which the Secretary of State will now have to face when the costs of Trident begin to escalate.