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Trident

Our debate has been very good, often thoughtful, and at times subdued. It was started in the best possible way with truly excellent speeches by the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). Throughout the day, the argument has fallen into several clear areas: the principle of deterrence and the case for possessing any nuclear weapons in the United Kingdom; the timing of the decision to replace the Trident deterrent; the cost implications; and the implications of our decision for disarmament globally. The bottom line in the debate has been that we live in a risky and unpredictable world. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said that threats can emerge and re-emerge, as well as diminish, with little warning. The era of the cold war ended unexpectedly abruptly, and we have no idea where the threats of the future might come from. As the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) said, it is necessary for us to live in the world as it is, rather than imagine that we are living in the world that we wish to live in. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) said in a very thoughtful speech, being strong deters attack but being weak can be an invitation to war and threat. Therefore, in a risky world, we need flexibility. It is not, as the House has often been told today, a choice between nuclear deterrence and spending more money on conventional defence. In an uncertain world, we require flexibility to deter credibly, and where possible, to deal with threats to the United Kingdom or to British strategic interests. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said at the outset, nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented; they will remain part of the international security picture in the future. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by North Korea and their attempted acquisition by Iran are real threats to our security. The opponents of our nuclear programme in this House today are, in effect, demanding that liberal democracies disarm in the face of dictatorships. We in this House do not have the right to gamble and to play fast and loose with the security of future generations, as Members in some parts of the House are asking us to do. I want to take head-on the argument in the amendment to the motion. The basic case made by the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and of many who spoke in support of his ideas was that we are beginning a so-called process of rearmament that is encouraging others to develop nuclear weapons. That is nonsense. There is no way that what we are voting on tonight could be described as rearmament. We have a single delivery system and a minimum credible deterrent, with a falling number of warheads, and there has been a 70 per cent. cut in our nuclear arsenal since the cold war. We are within not only the letter but the spirit of the non-proliferation treaty. That view was echoed in a number of excellent speeches, including that by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy), who made those points extraordinarily clearly. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) brought another dimension to the debate. In an excellent speech, he touched on the intervention of the Churches—many of us have had letters from them—regarding the moral implications, which have frequently been cited in this debate. Let me briefly deal with that issue. According to some, it is apparently not only unchristian to use nuclear weapons, but irreligious even to retain them to prevent a war. Yet if these arguments are valid, they are also timeless—retrospective, as well as applicable to the future. Purely for the sake of argument, let us hypothesise that nuclear bombs were not dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that mass conventional warfare continued well into 1946, culminating in a fiercely resisted invasion of mainland Japan, the murder of the remaining allied prisoners of war and an overall death toll greatly exceeding the horrific losses in the two bombed cities. This poses a dilemma for some. Would it have been better for many more to be killed in a continuing conventional conflict, as long as nuclear weapons were not used—or should it be accepted that the ghastliness of total war overrides the question of which weapons are used to minimise casualties and end the war as rapidly as possible? The immorality of mere possession is even harder to argue, and I am glad that that ethical dimension came out in today’s debate. It was interesting to be reminded in glimpses today of a time when politics in the House of Commons was perhaps a little more colourful. We had a full parade from the unreformed Labour left of the national self-loathing that we used to see regularly. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talked about post-imperial vanity, and of Britain vaingloriously strutting around the world. He talked about the pre-emption of the parliamentary vote, as though any decisions that MPs take freely that are not in accord with his view were not legitimate. That was echoed, of course, by the candidate for the leadership of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher). He talked about Parliament being bounced into a vote, and he said that the electorate should be consulted. It seemed utterly to escape his notice that the Government were elected—as he was—on a manifesto commitment to retain Britain’s nuclear deterrent. It might be worth reminding him that when Labour was unilateralist it was entirely unelectable. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths) said that we must lead by example in attempting to create a more peaceful world, but as my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary pointed out, a previous Labour leadership found that other nuclear states were utterly underwhelmed by gesture unilateralism. As the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said, in a powerful speech, it is nonsense to suggest that if we give up Trident others will meekly follow behind. He reminded his colleagues that they would have remained unelectable had he and Lord Kinnock not changed their party’s position from unilateralism to multilateralism. The timing of the decision has been a cause of genuine division and some confusion in the House today. The Foreign Secretary made the case clearly at the outset. Our first Trident submarine will be out of service by 2022 and our second by 2024. We need to have a new system in place by then. If we estimate that it takes 17 years to design, build, test and deploy a new system, this is the right time to make the decision. The time scale was the fig leaf used by the Liberal Democrats to disguise their utter confusion and division on the issue. The intellectual spaghetti dished up by the Liberal Democrat spokesman reminded us of the difference between parties that have to confront the realities of government and those that are merely interested observers on the sidelines. The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) said that it was not the time to give up our nuclear deterrent, but he was utterly incapable of describing an international strategic environment in which it would be appropriate to give up the nuclear deterrent. He said that we should leave the decision to the latest possible date. But if we are to avoid the possibility of a capability gap in the future and retain our skills base, this is the time to make the decision. We should be in no doubt that this evening is the big strategic moment to take that decision. I cannot help but feel that the delay that the Liberal Democrats propose is only to cover the fact that they cannot muster the political courage to face up to this most crucial decision. Today they were revealed at their most pathetic. The cost issue has been raised by several hon. Members, and the Foreign Secretary mentioned how the replacement would cost 5 to 6 per cent. of the defence budget and the development and purchase phase would cost 3 per cent. of the defence budget. I hope that the Secretary of State for Defence, when he winds up, will discuss how the Treasury intends to deal with the years in which those costs occur simultaneously, to ensure that our conventional forces do not suffer. There have been many other good contributions, notably from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), who pointed out that if the NPT had prohibited upgrading and modernising of nuclear forces, China, Russia and the US would never have signed up to it. In another excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) made it clear that the argument was never that the nuclear deterrent was designed to deter all threats, but that it was meant to deter nuclear blackmail and attack, which it has certainly done. We cannot predict the future. The nature of the threat that we face has changed quickly from the cold war to a range of other threats, and it could change quickly again. The onus is not on those of us who wish to retain a deterrent, but on those who want to scrap it to tell us why they believe that they can predict the risks that we will face in half a century’s time. Tonight is not about the Conservative party coming to support a Labour Government; it is about doing what we believe to be right for the country’s national security. We in the Conservative party have been consistent and clear about our belief in nuclear deterrence. The cold war did not just end; it was won with a clarity of purpose and political resolve, not least on the part of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Peace through strength has a strong historical track record. This is no time to abandon that track record, or our security.