Yesterday The Conservatives accused Labour of using the Trident missile defence system as a bargaining tool with the SNP.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, said that Labour leader Miliband had “stabbed his brother in the back” by becoming the head of the party and that he was willing to do the same to the UK, if the opportunity arose for SNP and Labour to form a coalition.
Fallon said that Labour was using Trident as a “bargaining chip” with the SNP.
In response Miliband said that national security was too important to play politics with and that the Tories were running a campaign of “deceit and lies.”
Speaking about Labour’s Trident policy, he said: “”We are committed to independent nuclear deterrent, we are committed to renewing trident, we are committed to continuous at-sea deterrent.”
When Miliband was asked about Fallon’s commens about him, his responsded: “[Fallon is] a decent person but he had demeaned himself and demeaned his office.”
The SNP are strongly against renewing the at-sea missile defence system and would vote to scrap the scheme if the party made it to governance. In a leaders debate in Scotland on Wednesday, Sturgeon replied to a question about Trident by saying, “Is Trident a red line? Well here’s my answer: you’d better believe Trident is a red line.”
Nicola Sturgeon has said that her party would work with Labour, if it means keeping the Tories out of Parliament, however she went on to say that the two parties would not be able to strike up a deal unless plans to renew Trident were dropped.
The fleet of Vanguard-class submarines come to the end of their operational life at the end of this decade after being in service since 1999.
The current fleet is made up of four submarines, one of which is constantly at sea at any time.
According to estimates Trident would cost the UK between £17.5bn and £23.4bn to renew, with between £12.9bn and £16.4bn being spent on the submarines themselves. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) believes that the costs for running the programme could cost over £100bn.
BAE Systems in Plymouth have agreed a contract with the UK MoD to design and develop the submarines that are set to replace the current Vanguard models.
