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Trident

The debate has been enormously serious, and I approach it with a degree of angst that I have detected in a number of other Members who have spoken. I was struck by the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), whom one would expect to be one of the most robust cold warriors and supporters of Trident imaginable. However, he declared some real worries, although he ultimately concluded that renewing Trident was the right thing to do. I also have huge respect for the contribution of my parliamentary neighbour and right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), a previous shadow Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary, who none the less came to the conclusion that he would vote against the retention of Trident. Until today, I took the view—the Whips are listening—that this was a matter of conscience rather than a matter for a whipped vote. Had I come to the relevant conclusion—the Whip on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) raises his ears expectantly, and I assure him that I shall not rebel this evening—I would have been more than ready to rebel, because I believe that this is more than anything an issue of conscience. After all, the House’s decision could result, perhaps long after all of us are dead, in a catastrophe that we would all do anything possible to avoid. I have therefore approached the matter with huge concern. Having listened with great care to all the arguments made today and during the run-up to the debate, I was initially struck by the notion that if we did not spend all this money on Trident we could spend it on conventional warfare. As I represent a constituency that has a number of defence bases, that argument was attractive at one stage. I have been convinced, however, by the argument advanced by the Secretary of State and the White Paper that the two pockets are entirely separate, and that spending on Trident will not affect the defence budget. The defence budget is too low anyway: it should be higher, and we should spend more on our conventional weapons. Whether or not we have Trident, that argument will not be affected. I admire the idealism of the traditional CND argument, which a number of Members have advanced today. There have always been people who are ready to say, ““I am a pacifist. I hate all forms of warfare, all arms, land mines, nuclear weapons and anything to do with armaments. I would abolish it.”” That idealism does not, however, appeal to me personally. We would certainly have done less well in the first world war had we abandoned our armaments in the run-up to it, as we did, to some degree, in the run-up to the second world war. I suspect that the catastrophe of 1939-45 would have been less bad had we rearmed sooner and listened to Winston Churchill among others. I am one of those who are convinced that we won the cold war not because of the activities of CND but because we were satisfactorily armed. The Soviet Union looked across the water, saw that we and the United States were armed, and chose not to do what it might otherwise have done. Had Margaret Thatcher not stood firm on the subject of cruise missiles outside Newbury, for example, I am clear that the Soviet Union would still be in existence today, and there is at least a risk that some parts of western Europe would be dominated by that evil empire. I am not one of those who would do away with arms because they do not like them. Our arms are a necessary part of preserving peace. After all, no one says to an armed policeman, ““If you put your baton down, Britain will be a safer place.”” Sadly, outside this Palace today we see policemen who are armed because it is believed that bad guys are trying to get into this place with guns. Asking a policeman to put his guns down would not mean that the bad guys would do likewise. I was struck by that aspect of one or two contributions this afternoon. For example, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) indicated that if others did not have such weapons, we should not have them either. That argument is quite wrong. It seems obvious to me that we are the good guys and that they are not; it is therefore perfectly reasonable that we should have such weapons. In my opinion, arms are the balance of peace. Indeed, the motto of my regiment, the Honourable Artillery Company, is ““Arma Pacis Fulcra””. One must have arms to achieve peace. Does any Member present who speaks with honesty and sincerity seriously believe that if we were to snap our fingers and say ““We are no longer a nuclear force””—if we were to say ““Follow us, O world, for we have done the right thing: we are doing away with Trident and not renewing it””—the world would be a safer place? Incidentally, those who support the ““delay”” amendment, notably the Liberal Democrats, are merely fooling themselves, or fooling the people out there. This evening we must reach a decision: either we support the notion of nuclear deterrence, or we do not. While I respect the argument of those who say that we do not, it is not my argument. I do not believe that even those who have spoken from the CND standpoint believe that the world would be a safer place if we abolished nuclear weapons. We all know perfectly well that if we did away with them, or indeed with conventional weapons—for the same argument applies to them—the world would be a worse place, not a better place. It is with a heavy heart, in a sense—because I personally feel unhappy about these matters—that I concluded that I would support the Government this evening.