Don't waste billions on Trident
Please sign our petition now
Dear Gordon Brown,
We call on you to reopen the decision to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system.
We call on you to ensure that taxpayers' money is not wasted on this project, by halting further spending until a review has been completed.
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What's the sense in spending a fortune on new Trident nuclear submarines now? Tony Blair's decision in 2007 to spend billions on new nuclear submarines was controversial before the financial crash.
Now essential public services are strapped for cash, it makes no sense to pump huge amounts of money into a scheme which even the defence community isn't convinced about. With all public spending under review so cuts can be made, Gordon Brown should make a start on reducing the number of costly nuclear systems we have in the UK.
At the United Nations General Assembly, Gordon Brown has said he will consider reducing the fleet of nuclear submarines from four to three. It's a start, but will do very little to reduce the money spent on Trident – only a tiny fraction of rocketing costs of the scheme would be saved by this proposal. Instead, we need the whole plan for Trident to be reviewed and for spending on the scheme to stop until the that process is completed.
If Gordon Brown doesn't halt Trident, he will be out of step with much of the rest of the world on the issue of nuclear weapons. Since Barack Obama was elected as President, he has worked hard to scale back nuclear weapons globally. Halting Trident would help to bring the UK into line with the first steps towards reducing the number of nuclear weapons all over the world.
"We do not need Trident. It is a vast amount of over capacity and it is monstrously expensive"
Paddy Ashdown (former leader of the Liberal Democrats and High Representative Bosnia and Herzegovina)
