Blair faces Labour revolt by 100 MPs over Trident

More than 100 Labour MPs are ready to vote against the Government over the replacement of the £65bn Trident nuclear weapon system, leaving Tony Blair with the humiliation of relying on Conservative votes to get it through the Commons.

Leading Labour MPs opposed to Trident said last night that they were tabling an amendment for the crucial vote next Wednesday calling for a decision to be delayed, possibly until the end of the decade.

The rebels drew strength from a report today by the Commons Select Committee on Defence which criticises Mr Blair for failing to fully justify his rush for a decision before he steps down this summer.

The cross-party report says that the Trident White Paper and an exchange of letters between Mr Blair and President George Bush together have failed 'to explain adequately why decisions on the UK participation in the Trident D5 missile life extension are required by 2007".

The cross-party committee said: "The Government should clarify why decisions on the missile are required now."

Jon Trickett, the Labour MP who is leading the rebellion, accused Mr Blair of "sidelining" Parliament by committing Britain to the replacement of its nuclear weapons system with US missiles in the exchange with President Bush. "I am confident that well over 100 MPs will support the amendment, realistically rising to over 150 by next Tuesday," said Mr Trickett. Mr Trickett also helped organise the petition opposing a Trident replacement signed by more than 100 celebrities which was published in The Independent under the title Not in Our Name. They voiced their opposition on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, which docked in central London as part of a campaign to oppose buying a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Alan Simpson, another leading rebel, called on Gordon Brown to disown the Prime Minister's strategy. "These are important messages for Brown which he would be lunatic to ignore," said Mr Simpson. "If the Chancellor backs this urgent push by Blair to sign off one of his legacy issues, there will be a large number of Labour MPs who won't support Brown in his rush for the leadership."

Liberal Democrats and some Tories are expected to support the rebels' call for a delay. The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell, said: " Tony Blair's premature decision to replace Trident is more about his legacy than the national interest. The Liberal Democrats will not support this move in Parliament."

Defence experts last night claimed that they had evidence that Mr Blair has speeded up the decision so that it could be endorsed before he leaves office.

The Trident submarines were originally said to have a life expectancy of 30 years but ministers have reduced it to 25 years to force the issue onto the agenda now, said Malcolm Savidge, a former Labour MP and a consultant to the Oxford Research Group.

Alleging that there were echoes of the rush to war against Iraq on a false premise, Mr Savidge said: "The effect of this is to claim that Parliament must decide early in 2007, which coincides with the PM's time in office and the interests of the defence industries."

The White Paper put the cost of the missile system at £20bn but Greenpeace today will claim that the real cost of a replacement for Trident could rise to more than £100bn over its lifetime, and if the money was spent on tackling climate change, it could cut Britain's carbon emissions by about 12 per cent.

Pressure to spend more money on conventional defence by halting the replacement of Trident came as the chief of the defence staffadmitted that Britain's armed forces were 'very stretched' by their current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Air Chief Marshall Sir Jock Stirrup told the defence committee there was "not much more left in the locker". Commitments had been greater and gone longer than planned.

"We will either at some stage, in the not too distant future, need to reduce the overall level of commitment, or think about the overall force structure," he told MPs.