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Armed Forces: Future Defence Policy

My Lords, from these Benches I, too, express our condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in recent days. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting the Messines Ridge as part of a pilgrimage to the Flanders battlefields. In what I suspect will be a rare moment of lightness, I want to reflect on the fact that the team organiser decided that he would send me into the middle of the field to illustrate a point. He wanted to illustrate that out of the 21 mines that had been planted in 1917, 19 blew up, killing 10,000 men in the first instance. Two mines remained. One still remains in an uncertain state. I was not sure what I had done to upset the team leader to make me stand over the spot where this mine is alleged to be. However, when I returned to the group, a colleague took me to one side and said, "You realise, don’t you, that in exactly this field in 1914 at Christmas, combatants got out of their trenches, met one another, played football and shared gifts for Christmas?". Somehow or other, human beings recognised, subliminally at least, that we are made for greater things. Later that week, I had the privilege of taking the service at the Menin Gate. During that ceremony, at the end of the gate were two recently trained squads of young soldiers from Catterick. I was asked to speak to them, which I was delighted to do, and I asked each one in turn, "Where are you going, sir?". The responses were Northern Ireland, Afghanistan or Iraq. It was particularly poignant in that place, in which many thousands have no known grave, to be standing beside young men who were brave and willing to go to fight for their country yet again. War and its consequences remain among the biggest issues for humanity to resolve. We must have a better way for the future. Perhaps I may dare to presume on the metaphor of an unexploded bomb—a bomb which we are sitting on at present. It is called Trident. I am delighted that Members of this House, including former Defence Ministers and service chiefs, have set up a cross-party group to promote nuclear disarmament as an issue which they describe as critical. The noble Lord, Lord King, is a member, as are other noble and gallant Lords. George Shultz, who was a consummate Cold War warrior, recently stated that he believed that nuclear disarmament was an idea whose time had come. He said that here was a weapon that had the power to wipe out big swathes of humanity, asked how anyone had the right to use such a weapon, and concluded that there was no morality to it at all. The Minister indicated that the issue of nuclear weaponry is under review—and rightly so. Next year will mark the review of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and it is entirely the responsibility of all signatories, of which the United Kingdom is one, to consider their current positions in respect of non-proliferation. I am not an impossibilist, which I was once accused of being by Des Browne on "Channel 4 News". I recognise that it takes time to dismantle nuclear weapons. However, we need to realise that the desired result is imperative and we can make a distinctive and important contribution at this moment in history by not renewing the Trident weapons system. This will have two effects. First, it will declare our continued commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and, secondly, it will make resources available for the kind of conflicts which the Minister has outlined as being integral in the defence strategy of the future. When I was leaving the battlefields of Flanders, like many people I went to the graveyards. I had the privilege of taking a small ceremony for the remembrance of Harry Patch at the Tyne Cot cemetery. Harry was a member of the city of Wells in which I live and I knew him very well indeed. I also visited one of the German cemeteries. There on one of the stones were the words of Einstein: ""I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"." I hope that in this debate and in the future defence policy of this country, we can make a clear decision that it is time to bring an end to nuclear weapons of all kinds, and at this moment take the lead in making non-proliferation a reality.