What the PM should read on his hols
July 21, 2009
As Parliament rises for the summer recess, disconsolate MPs are viewing a political scene laid waste by the recession, endless media examination of MPs’ expenses claims and a febrile media atmosphere in which debate is centred on which party would be the “best” at cutting public expenditure.
Sadly, the nearest we’ve got to a debate about poverty and social needs in the recent past has been Alan Milburn’s examination of entry to the professions by young people from non-professional backgrounds. The answer, in traditional new Labour parlance, is to promote ‘meritocracy’ rather than tackle the impoverishment of millions caused by inadequate spending on housing, education and health. There is enthusiasm for the endless means-testing of provisions instead of the traditional Labour approach of universality coupled with taxation.
As Gordon Brown heads for his own break, one wonders what thoughts he will be giving to public spending. The annual £30 billion arms budget and the burgeoning cost of the Afghanistan war - which has now reached £3 billion - are areas that seem to have evaded the scrutiny of commentators and most serious newspapers.
In answer to renewed calls for debate on the Trident nuclear missile system and its replacement, Brown vacillates between vague assertions about value for money, support for the nuclear disarmament process and retention of the “independent” nuclear deterrent.
Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, in response to questions that he seemed to be opposed to nuclear weapons, said he didn’t agree and refused to engage in further debate. I have discovered an excellent book for Brown to read during his summer break. At 171 pages, it’s quite a find. Nuclear Weapons At What Cost, by Ben Cramer of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva, is beautifully laid out, with maps, photos and diagrams. This extremely well researched book shows the horrific levels of world military expenditure, which reached $1,464 billion last year - almost one and a half trillion dollars. This is a 6 per cent increase since 2006.
The US expenditure on nuclear weapons in 2008 stood at $52.4 billion - that’s around 12 per cent of the total defence budget. In an examination of nuclear costs, the nuclear spending per capita worldwide averages $67, with the highest being Israel at $215 per head of the population. The lowest is India at $3 per head, per year. The UK manages to spend $60 per head, equalling one nuclear warhead for every 330,000 people.
When Brown reads through the book, he will begin to understand the nature of nuclear expenditure and the damage it does. For example, the removal wholesale of people from Pacific islands during the cold war by the US, France, Britain and the Soviet Union, as well as the toxic nuclear pollutants left behind at former military test sites.
Not only are people dying from cancers in Japan following the Nagasaki and Hiroshima explosions of 1945, but they are also suffering throughout the Pacific, in Australia and in the US from nuclear tests.
In May, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) five-yearly review will be held in New York. Brown, a man with an eye to history, could well reflect on the moral impact of one of the five nuclear states arriving at the conference with the aura of a peacemaker by cancelling the planned expenditure of £76 billion on Trident replacement and cancelling the development of a new warhead. He should say that this money will be held in reserve for peaceful disarmament and medical needs.
The NPT of itself cannot bring about disarmament, but it can at least prevent the spread of nuclear weapons among its signatory states - and Iran if an example is set by the five declared holders of nuclear weapons who are committed to making disarmament possible by the 1970 treaty.
The non-declared states of North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel have to be encouraged into disarmament by a nuclear weapons convention that involves all states, thus ensuring there is a forum of verifiable disarmament and decommissioning.
Instead of cutting vital public expenditure and infrastructure projects, a serious examination of the defence budget would be a good start. It could, indeed, be Brown’s legacy.
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