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Armed Forces: Nuclear Deterrent

My Lords, I am sure that all your Lordships are very grateful to the Minister for presenting this vital matter to us in such assiduous detail. What he has had to say is very useful in guiding us. It will come as no surprise to hear that we on this side believe that it is completely right to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent and to take the necessary steps in good time to ensure that that is achieved. For the world as it is and, sadly, is likely to be for a long time to come, we have to send a simple message: that a nuclear attack on us would be suicide for the attacker. An attempted sting will produce a fatal sting in return. That is merely repeating the grim message of deterrence. It means that in the modern world, much as it was in the world of ages now passed, a credible minimum deterrent is for us an essential part of the security jigsaw—not to be used but to prevent nuclear weapons ever being used, because that would be total fatal destruction. All your Lordships realise that for the public—those who want to know about these things—that is quite a complicated proposition. Rightly, the public today require an insight into the argumentation and thinking behind that proposition from both the Government and we on this side of the House, who plan to be in government before long. Before getting on to that, let me say a few words about the more immediate technical aspects of the decision on which the Minister has dwelt. We respect and take in good faith the Prime Minister’s view on timing. We accept that the best defence minds must have been involved in these decisions on replacement and the time needed for new designs and construction. I know these have been queried by some United States submarine experts very recently, but frankly the Opposition do not have all the facts that are available to the Government of the country. The Government do have access to those facts, as they should, so we cannot do anything but assume that the Prime Minister is acting completely in the national interest and on the best possible expert advice. I confess as a layman that 14 years does seem a long time in which to build a submarine platform. Seventeen years sounds even longer, but I suppose we have to remember that the present Vanguard-class submarines started to be built well over a decade ago, although the last one was completed only in 2001. One has only to think of the pace of technology in the past few years and the state that something as simple as the mobile telephone was in only seven or eight years ago. One needs only to see how far they have come to realise just how enormously every aspect of electronic technology, which of course is at the heart of the Vanguard and Trident systems, has altered, even in the past two or three years. By 2022, the present submarines will be antiques if left in their present situation. Whether we need three or four is an open question, as is the question whether with three we can manage the continuously-at-sea strategy. I reflect merely that having three, with one under repair, one being prepared and one having to be refurbished in some way, and all three observably in port, could have its obvious dangers. The secret is secrecy and the lack of knowledge of the whereabouts of the submarines, which could be jeopardised. I leave it to my noble friend Lord Astor to dwell on these issues at greater length at the end of the debate and with greater expertise, but I am sure he will confirm my view that decisions are now needed and cannot be delayed for very long, at least on the information that we have been given. However, as I have said, those of us who hold this view, and who therefore support the Government’s direction on this matter, also owe it to the public and to your Lordships to explain something of the background and the context of our thinking. People understandably feel that it is not enough simply to say, ““Something is right for us; we feel it is right; that is our judgment, and that is that. Good afternoon””. That is not good enough. Decisions of this kind may be quick to be announced but they bind for decades ahead. What is decided and proposed in this White Paper both shapes our bequest to future generations and our contribution to the security of the wider world, with which we are ever more intimately bound up. What we do affects both the wider alliance to which we belong and the wider world debate about nuclear weapons and their proliferation, which is becoming more and more intense every day. I know there are those who argue that nuclear weapons are no defence against terrorism, which is where the deadly threat to our security comes from. It is undeniably a deadly threat. The world is flat not only in economic terms, as Thomas Friedman and others put it so well, but in terms of weapons and power, or is becoming so. Weapons technology today means that the smallest are now level with the mightiest, and that tiny groups with deadly material and deadly high-tech weapons can challenge the largest military forces and the mightiest weapons systems on earth. Even if nuclear weapons cannot meet that kind of threat, terrorists are, as the Minister rightly reminded us, helped and encouraged, sometimes on a proxy basis, by rogue states such as North Korea. They also have the opportunity to gain access to nuclear and fissile materials where other states, which may not be badly intentioned, are nevertheless lax in their control of these materials. The case of AQ Khan comes very much to mind in that context. So if we need a credible deterrent, which I believe we do, as part of the global discipline against either maniacal or negligent behaviour, what are our underlying reasons and aims behind that need and the decisions that are now being taken? First, obviously, we want to see world peace; secondly, we want to see our own nation’s security in as far as it can be separated from the global security network, which nowadays is less and less; thirdly, we have to halt further proliferations and wind down the systems of existing nuclear states to a minimum in accordance with the aims of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; and fourthly, we have to maintain constant pressure for armament reduction of all sorts, which can only be multilateral. There are those who want unilateral action. Some idealists believe that it would set an example to aspiring nuclear states. I believe that it would do no such thing. On the contrary, it would present new targets, new incentives and new opportunities for irresponsible actions. I referred to peace as an objective. We are now very far from that. All I can say is that at least no nukes have been let off in anger, not since Hiroshima. It is plain that deterrence at the nuclear level works and people cite the developments between Pakistan and India as an example. It is in our direct national interest to ensure that mutual deterrence continues to work because as I said earlier the aim must be to prevent the weapons ever being used. Any use of any nuclear weapon anywhere in the world would today freeze up the open international system immediately, which is more and more integrated thanks to the information revolution. It would threaten the globe’s highly integrated energy and material supplies and paralyse world economies and investment. That is our national security in the widest but nevertheless the most realistic sense in today’s world. As for our national security in the more narrow sense of protecting these islands, the truth is that for almost every nation nowadays a nuclear attack on one is a nuclear attack on all. The idea that as an existing, recognised nuclear power we can step out of the increasingly integrated world security system by unilateral action would be like stepping clumsily out of a small boat. It could keel over by the act of our stepping out of it. The NPT, with its acceptance of five existing nuclear states and the comprehensive regime of monitoring to deter all others, is just that small boat and it is nearly under water while we are standing here. It clearly needs straightening and tightening up. I recently visited the IAEA in Vienna. Mr Baradei and his expert colleagues there have been giving enormous thought to a strategy for strengthening and renewing the NPT rather than letting it be submerged by careless, irresponsible or even well intentioned actions. The IAEA believes that, first, all existing nuclear weapons and material must be locked up totally and completely. There must be no loose nukes, as its members put it. That requires more intense international co-operation than ever before. If I may say so, it is good that our Department of Trade and Industry officials in the DTI’s international nuclear policy and programme department are playing a key part in helping Russia, for one, which is probably the most important country in that respect, to do that and to ensure that fissile material is locked up. Secondly, there must be no new uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing facilities. We must continue to use a complex combination of sticks and carrots to stop Iran going this way. Iran can be helped with civil nuclear power. Some people ask why Iran needs it when it has all that oil, but it is an incredible fact that Iran is at this moment importing oil, such a mess has it made of its own economy. Iran must not be permitted to flout either the existing NPT regime or a better one that can be devised. If it is so permitted, beyond that lies cataclysm, massive proliferation and disaster. Thirdly, there must be no new nuclear states. North Korea is the immediate danger. Perhaps it is not said often enough, but we all know that China holds the cards. China is capable of holding the whip hand and of halting North Korean plans if it wants to. It is through talking to China and bringing it to the point where it sees the acute danger to itself that the path to a solution will be found. Fourthly, there must be a true global alliance against nuclear terrorism and the terrorist procurement of nuclear materials. Fifthly, as the IAEA suggests, we want to work towards an independent system of guarantees, supplying all states with the nuclear fuel they will increasingly need as peaceful, low-carbon civil nuclear power expands enormously, which it will. Whether some people have doubts or not, it is almost certain that that will happen. This is the background against which our decision is made today. It points to continual leverage and the use of the position which history has shaped for us as a recognised nuclear power, which means retaining a reduced and minimalised deterrent, as the Minister described it, to help us work towards these objectives in an intensely dangerous international environment. To abandon that capability by decisions or non-decisions now to let the whole system run down would leave us uninsured, unprotected against grim possibilities and uninfluential in curbing proliferation of nuclear weapons across the planet. That is not a legacy which anyone would care to leave to their children.