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Nuclear Disarmament

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this valuable and timely debate. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Patten, that as an almost-lifetime non-smoker I do not intend to start inhaling. This debate, in which two former Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, two former Secretaries of State for Defence, a former European Commissioner, two very distinguished military figures and many others have contributed, is a signal of how well this House is equipped to carry out thoughtful and fairly in-depth discussion of these highly technical, but also highly political, issues. One of my objectives, which I hoped to achieve—to demonstrate that we have a broad national consensus on a very large amount of the area covered by this debate—has been amply fulfilled by the contributions, including those from the Front Benches, which gave me great encouragement. I think that we can say that if there is a change of Government in the middle of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, whoever represents this country will be able to feel that they have solid support from all parties in a very important but challenging agenda. My final thought that I would leave is that I suspect we will discuss these matters again before too long. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers. Motion withdrawn.