Spend on armed forces

He asked if our three Labour MPs would like to respond to the Labour leader’s thoughts on Trident, which, in Mr Wright’s opinion, would weaken UK defences.

If Mr Wright wants to use a world destroying weapon as a political football, he should reciprocate and give his thoughts on the current Tory Government which is hell bent on reducing the nations defences against the advice of the most experienced and respected military experts in the UK.

Like Mr Corbyn, they are calling for a serious debate on the future of Trident. They state it has failed as a deterrent to the scale of violence Britain currently faces, in particular with international terrorism.

The former army leaders state the £20billion that will be spent on renewing Trident should instead be spent on conventional weapons and funding for our armed forces.

Under this Government our defence budget has been cut by 20%. Chatham House foreign policy experts have warned the cuts weakened the nation’s defensive capabilities and impaired the country’s ability to project power.

The American defence secretary said, Britain could become “disengaged if it continued to make substantial cuts to defence spending”.

On the subject of Trident, a military expert said: “First of all we don’t own the missiles and secondly, it would be absolutely unthinkable that we should consider or even threaten to use it without having clearance from America.”

So we’d be spending at least £20billion – possibly £100billion– on a weapon system that’s “completely useless”, that we can’t use independently and would be better spent on our existing armed forces.

W Quinn