---

Trident

As my right hon. Friends the shadow Ministers know, and as I have indicated over the past six months, I cannot support the Government in the Division lobby tonight. The effective decision to replace Trident is premature, it has not been fully considered, and it is not justified. The debate is not about being for or against nuclear weapons. I was strongly supportive of Trident and our other nuclear deterrents during the cold war. Trident will be with us for the next twenty years, and possibly longer, so that is not the issue. This debate is about the deterrent which, in 17 years’ time, we will bequeath to the next generation. None of us can predict what international relationships will be like so far ahead, yet we are being asked to make a full commitment to a highly expensive weapons system that, in the event, could prove ineffective as a deterrent and is questionable in its justification. We are committing not ourselves but the next generation, who may have very different views on deterrence and, indeed, on which defence priorities we should spend the massive sums involved. There are three key questions. First, do we need a deterrent? My answer is yes. In an uncertain world, it is surely better to deter aggression than to respond to it after it has occurred. To be successful, however, a deterrent must be proportionate to the perceived threat; it must be clearly effective and credible; and therefore need never be used. Belief in the aggressor’s mind that there is the will if necessary to use that deterrent is essential to its credibility, which is why it must be proportionate. Cold war deterrents worked because the balanced threat of mutually assured destruction and the nuclear doctrine between two rational enemies who understood the consequences assured its success. Any future deterrent must be powerful enough to create fear in the potential enemy; its nature must be such that the enemy believes we would really use it if attacked; hence it must proportionate to the threat that the enemy poses. The next question, which is crucial, is: does the deterrent need to be nuclear? Nuclear warheads are weapons of mass destruction. When we faced the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal, they made sense, because the Soviet bloc was a known enemy that posed a quantifiable threat. The nuclear arsenal of the West was sufficient to deter that threat and, in my view, it was proportionate to it. Since 1989 things have dramatically changed. The enemy today and in the future is unclear and its threat is unquantifiable. Proponents of replacing Trident argue that there might be a revival of the Russian confrontation. That is a pretty long shot. Even longer is the scenario of a new cold war-style ideologically-driven nuclear arms race where our nuclear deterrent would once again become relevant. The only ideological conflict that I can see is one where it would not be a deterrent anyway, because of the nature of that ideology. We are told that Trident is an insurance against such remote possibilities, but £20 billion is a pretty hefty premium against a pretty unlikely threat. Today’s and, I suspect, tomorrow’s threats come more from international terrorism and so-called rogue states. Iran is sometimes cited as encompassing both. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that she could pose a nuclear threat to the United Kingdom. Does the House really believe that a British Government, even in response to an attack, would in the 21st century be prepared to obliterate Tehran? I do not believe that and, more importantly, I do not believe the Iranians believe it, yet that is the stark key to successful deterrence, and if that belief does not exist, it is not a deterrent. The truth is that the idea of automatic reactive mass obliteration, which was so fundamental to the concept of mutually assured destruction, does not wash any more, and people in the west would not accept it. Yet Trident’s credibility rests on it. To me, Trident was a deterrent of the 20th century; it is not a deterrent of the 21st. We should be looking for something more proportionate and therefore more credible, and that might well not be nuclear. If we need time to do that, we should make that time. If the deterrent is nuclear, should it be Trident? Trident was originally chosen because it was mobile and invisible, and therefore invulnerable to pre-emptive strike. We are told that that is still the case today. But will it still be invisible in 20 years? That is the crucial question. Do we believe that, by then, advances in technology will not have found a means of tracking submarines underwater from space or from the sea itself? If so, Trident will be redundant and the massive expenditure will have been wasted. Are we prepared to bet against that? Are there alternatives? Having chosen Trident, the Government are determined not to weaken their position by conceding that there might be alternatives. I understand that. They have a case to make. However, after pressing them for many months, I was pleased that they finally acknowledged that alongside the options in the White Paper, there has been research into the electromagnetic launch of projectiles to achieve hypersonic velocities, and that study of kinetic energy missiles has been undertaken, albeit now discontinued. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) referred to those. I have heard also from other sources of more substantial research work into these technologies which suggests their potential to be developed into variable, non-nuclear but powerful weapons systems that could become credible deterrents. That is what we should be exploring, yet such options are not even discussed by the Government in this debate or in the White Paper. In fairness to the generation upon whom we are effectively seeking to dump an irreversible commitment to ““son of Trident””, we should at least show that we have examined the options before doing so. I believe and have argued previously that before the House takes a final decision, we need a senior independent examination of and report on all the options, not just those in the White Paper. The decision is far too important to railroad through the House. Do we have to decide now? American experts, including Professor Richard Garwin and former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle, tell us that on United States’ experience, our submarines could also have their life extended significantly beyond present calculations. Indeed, Philip Coyle says that the Vanguards included later improvements on the US design and"““my hunch would be that because of the improvements made by the UK, UK systems would have longer lifetimes than US systems””." Whatever the exact truth, there is undoubtedly flexibility on time. The Government should use it to allow a proper assessment of their case to be made. Their failure to do so smacks of a rushed decision that will affect not us, but the next generation. We owe the next generation better than that. We owe them an honest assessment and a fully and responsibly justified decision. The White Paper and the motion offer neither of those. I will therefore support the amendment in the Lobby tonight.