MoD may sell carrier to fill huge hole in defence budget

12 April 2012

Britain may be forced to sell one of its flagship new aircraft carriers to plug a huge hole in its defence budget.

Talks are taking place at the Ministry of Defence about finding a buyer for one of the ships being built at a cost of £5.2 billion for the Royal Navy. The financial crisis at the MoD has deepened after Chancellor George Osborne rejected a bid by Defence Secretary Liam Fox to get the Treasury to pay for the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent, which will cost tens of billions.

Senior military insiders are not optimistic about forcing the Treasury to change its stance on funding the upgrade of the submarine-borne nuclear weapons system.

But they believe that Prime Minister David Cameron and other Cabinet ministers may be able to persuade the Chancellor to agree a more generous settlement for the MoD once they realise how devastating and politically unpalatable cuts to the military budget would be.

Having to sell one of the two new 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers — HMS Queen Elizabeth, which is due to come into service in 2016, or HMS Prince of Wales, due for launch in 2018 — would be humiliating for the Navy, leaving the UK with only one carrier.

Britain has been building defence co-operation with France and has discussed timing maintenance so that at least one of the countries has an aircraft carrier operational at all times.

A sale to France is thought unlikely but selling to another ally is being discussed. India is understood to have expressed an interest. Simply scrapping one of the carriers is believed to be too expensive due to contractual arrangements.

This morning Lord West, the former head of the Navy who was made security minister under Labour, insisted that the Treasury should fund renewing Trident.

"Last time this was done it came from the Ministry of Defence budget and effectively it cost the Navy about 25 destroyers and frigates," he told the BBC. "If that happened today, we would not have any destroyers and frigates left."

He claimed that under the Labour government, the Treasury was due to pick up the bill to replace Trident, though this is disputed by other sources.If deep cuts have to be made, Lord West believes the RAF's Tornado fleet should be axed — which could save about £7 billion.

He accepted there was an argument to end the "continuous at sea" deployment of the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Senior Liberal Democrats believe that the MoD may have to downgrade the nuclear deterrent due to budget cuts which could also see the size of the Army reduced. They have argued that the number of Trident nuclear submarines could be cut from four to three.

Former Lib-Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: "It's self-evident that a decision to renew Trident on a like-for-like basis will have a serious impact on Britain's conventional capability."

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