© David Moir / ReutersCrew from HMS Vengeance, a British Royal Navy Vanguard class Trident Ballistic Missile Submarine, stand on their vessel as they return along the Clyde river to the Faslane naval base near Glasgow, Scotland.
, far exceeding initial expectations, Cameron's Conservative party lawmakers told Reuters.
The final decision on replacing the UK's four aging nuclear subs is due to be made in 2016, with Prime Minister David Cameron being a strong backer of continuing the country's at-sea nuclear deterrent.
The British government had said earlier that the purchase of new Vanguard-class vessels, which are capable of carrying Trident missiles, would require around 15-20 billion pounds, without specifying estimated maintenance costs.
However, Minister of State for Defense Procurement Philip Dunne said on Friday that the price tag for the state-of-the-art submarines will come in at around 25 billion pounds.
The new figures were revealed in Dunne's written parliamentary response to fellow Conservative party lawmaker Crispin Blunt's request.
According to the response, the in-service costs would amount to about 6 percent of the annual defense budget, which now stands at around 34 billion pounds, over the vessels' lifetime.
Comment: Earlier this year thousands marched in London opposing the replacement of the Trident nuclear defense system stressing
'welfare not warfare'.
With the budgets of
three million working class families about to be
plundered by an average of £1,300 per year under the 'austerity axe' of Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne; this decision indicates where the real priorities of the so-called 'compassionate' Conservatives really lay.
Despite the pro-austerity rhetoric from Westminster, we are
not "all in this together". In Britain today,
the richest are 105 times better off than the poorest in society. It is the
"European capital of inequality", worse even than the United States! Studies show that these obscene, unnecessarily harsh austerity measures are having devastating repercussions among those most vulnerable, as
people go hungry, forcing dependency on food banks.
In May this year, Prime Minister David Cameron
told MP's that he 'will not waste a single moment with getting on with the task' of reshaping Britain, and of 'building something special'. We are beginning to see just what sort of psychopathic, elitist reality he is intent on building!
Comment: Washington and Israel must be fuming! Also see: