Responding to shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry’s speech at the Royal United Services Institute, CND’s Kate Hudson said:

“These are precisely the questions the government needs to answer, and we congratulate the shadow defence secretary for asking them. It seems it’s a deliberate strategy for the government to avoid giving honest answers about Trident. They know that if more people knew the facts about Trident many, including Conservative MPs, would be outraged.

“Our research shows that it will cost at least £205 billion to replace Trident, a particularly staggering figure when we consider the enormous cuts being made elsewhere in the public sector; it’s out of date technology, and far from addressing the real security threats we face from terrorism, global pandemics, cyber warfare and climate change, it actually makes us a target.”