EVEN higher potential Trident replacement costs (“Tories under fire as Trident renewal rockets to £167bn”, The Herald, October 26) will be viewed by unilateralists as further evidence of the need to stop what they view as a waste of public money. The SNP Government will also jump on the chance to use even higher numbers in their regular attempts to conflate nationalism and the anti-nuclear weapon movement. In practice, whatever the correct figure, no one disagrees that an immense amount of money is required to maintain a nuclear deterrent.

Those of us unconvinced by the unilateral approach are not quite as unfeeling about the alternate uses the money could be put to, such as alleviating poverty, or as gung-ho about the potential use of nuclear weapons, as is often implied by the anti-Trident lobby. I suspect a majority of the public favour a multilateral position, reducing and ultimately removing nuclear weapons, as other countries do the same. We would all, no doubt, prefer to not need to spend billions a year on the nuclear deterrent, or indeed nearly £40 billion per annum on defence in total, but in an often unpredictable and violent world we cannot leave ourselves defenceless.

Arguably, without the nuclear deterrent we would need to spend more on conventional forces both to retain a credible defence and a capability to act when needed in other parts of the world. Of course we could completely turn our eyes away from what happens elsewhere in the world and focus purely on home defence, but two previous world wars have surely shown us how short sighted that would be.

Keith Howell,

White Moss,

West Linton,

Peeblesshire.

REGARDING the soaring cost of the renewal of Trident: surely all that is needed is for David Cameron to speak nicely to the Chinese premier and this project could be added to the other Chinese investments in our nuclear future? Security concerns for Chinese supply of nuclear capability are clearly not an issue for the Government, and unlike Hinkley Point power station, we don’t expect to ever find out if a Chinese Trident would work.

John West

Woodlands,

Birchwood Road,

Uplawmoor.