50 years of nuclear submarines

That this House notes that 26 February 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of the laying down of HMS Resolution, the first Royal Navy Polaris Ballistic Nuclear Missile Submarine; further notes that HMS Resolution was decommissioned on 22 October 1994 yet remains laid up at Rosyth dockyard with the Ministry of Defence still to finalise plans for removal of its radioactive reactor; recognises the cost of Polaris procurement and modification as equivalent to £3 billion in today's money with further expenditure on Polaris between 1980 to 1997 equivalent to £9 billion; expresses concern that the acquisition cost of the Trident programme is equivalent to £21 billion with annual in-service costs currently running at £3 billion per annum; raises further concern that under the Polaris sales agreement the UK continues to pay the US Department of Defence an annual contribution towards the overall cost of the Strategic Weapons Facility at Kings Bay, USA; notes the Ministry of Defence estimates the cost of Trident replacement to be £31 billion with a further £10 billion committed in contingency costs; expresses concern that a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament assessment put the total cost of the Dreadnought programme close to £205 billion; agrees that the past 50 years maintaining the UK’s status as a nuclear power has constituted a grotesque waste of public resources that could and should have been deployed to create a fairer more equal society; and believes the UK Government should abandon the obscenity of their unaffordable nuclear weapons of mass destruction programme.