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Trident

The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong point, which I want to add to. However, I have not quite finished with our friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches. The Liberal Democrat policy paper on this matter said that the period between now and 2014"““should be used to allow a clearer picture to develop concerning the proliferation of states that possess nuclear weapons and their ability to directly threaten Britain””." The trouble with that is that when we arrived at 2014, we would still not know—even if the world was, against all indications, becoming a more peaceable place—what threats we might face in the 2040s. However, if the world had taken a turn in a more dangerous direction, it would by then be too late to prevent us from having a significant gap for several years in our continuous at-sea deterrent in the mid-2020s. That is like building a house for the next half century and deciding on the basis of the weather in the next few months whether to bother with a roof. That is not a viable policy. Of course, because the uncertainties in these time scales are so great, the only way to time such decisions is with a sensible precaution, providing a reasonable time buffer. We should have very—