UK should scrap Trident

The UK Chancellor Philip Hammond has just announced an extra £1 billion for the Ministry of Defence. This is far more than the £400 million one-off payment that cash-strapped schools across the UK will be receiving. CND is calling on the government to scrap Trident’s replacement, a new nuclear weapons system expected to cost at least £205 billion. This money should be invested in people not weapons of mass destruction.

Here are just three alternative proposals the UK Chancellor could have announced today.

Climate not Trident: 100,000 wind turbines could be built in UK if just half of the money spent on replacing Trident was invested in renewable energy.

Homes not Trident: The average cost of building a new house in Britain is £150,000. This means that the government in partnership with civil society could build over 650,000 houses with the money it is planning to spend on Trident.

NHS not Trident: An extra £205 billion could employ 150,000 new nurses and build 120 state of the art hospitals. Or we could use the money to support our ageing population by providing occupational care at home allowing people to live independently for longer.

As Kate Hudson says in her latest blog post “one thing is certain, whatever the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer says, the British economy is being deprived of the investment it needs to grow and flourish, and that our society is being denied the funding it needs to ensure the health, welfare and happiness of its citizens.”

We need more people to know about the extortionate cost of replacing Trident – and more people to campaign against the government spending much-needed money on nuclear weapons. We’re asking all CND members to help by signing the Scrap Trident petition.

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