TRIDENT (Hansard, 25 January 1993)

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Viscount Cranborne)

The current estimate of the total project cost of the Trident programme is £10,676 million, if all expenditure, including payments already made, is brought up to current prices and a common exchange rate of £1 = $1.74, as assumed in the long-term costing of the defence programme. If payments already made are expressed as the prices and exchange rates actually incurred, the equivalent estimate is now £9,596 million. Expenditure on the Trident programme to 31st August 1992 represented some 60 per cent. of the overall estimate.

The revised estimate of £10,676 million represents a small real cost reduction of £18 million compared to that announced last year, after allowing for the effects of inflation and exchange rate variations. The increase in cash terms is £158 million. The reduction in real terms since the original 1982 Trident II estimate, including the savings resulting from the decision to have United Kingdom missiles processed in the United States facility at King's Bay, Georgia, now stands at some £2.8 billion.

The proportion of the programme to be undertaken in the United Kingdom has increased from 72 per cent. to 74 per cent.

The Select Committee on Defence previously asked that when announcing the annual revised estimate we should report on the state of the project as a whole. I am pleased to say that the Trident programme remains on schedule to enter service in the mid-1990s. There has been no slippage in the in-service date since the decision to purchase Trident II was announced in March 1982. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence is, as in previous years, sending the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee and of the Select Committee on Defence a more detailed report covering the points on which the Select Committee on Defence sought advice. I am also placing a copy of this report in the Library of the House.