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Trident

The point stands for itself. I quickly want to move on to address the question of legality. Many legal opinions have suggested that the Government’s proposals are not compatible with our article VI obligations under the NPT. I wrote to the Attorney-General to find out whether the Cabinet had received a legal opinion on the matter. The reply that I received today does not indicate whether the Cabinet did receive a legal opinion. However, the reply clearly says—in so far as the legal position is justified—that the Government are bound to act in good faith to bring about disarmament, but that there is no time scale in which to engage in that. If we are bound to do something and to act in good faith, yet the Attorney-General says that we can do so whenever we choose, that is not actually acting in good faith. If that is the best legal case that the Government have, it is a very weak one.