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Global Security (Non-Proliferation)

I cannot answer that question. The Committee's report was not a detailed report on Trident. The Defence Committee made a detailed inquiry on that issue and asked a number of questions. It got some information from the Government as a response, but such matters need to be pursued by my hon. Friend through other channels rather than through me. There are one or two other points of difference. The Government rejected some of our recommendations on chemical and biological weapons, but I will not go into that now. They said that they would only consider—rather than advocate—the inclusion in future international agreements of a defined set of "disagreeable consequences" that would act as a deterrent to states flouting their commitments or withdrawing. I have already given the example of North Korea. Overall, although the Committee has not necessarily reached a collective decision, we are pleased at the number of recommendations that we made with which the Government agreed. I am also pleased that through "The Road to 2010" document, the conference that was held last September and other developments, the Government are taking our suggestions seriously. Just on 15 February, the Committee received a detailed letter from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office setting out responses to recommendations that we had made. That letter gave further information and updated us on the developments in the period since the original response was published last August. That is all very welcome. The world is at a crucial moment. If the non-proliferation treaty review conference is a success and the resetting of relations between the United States and Russia leads to significant reductions in their nuclear arsenals, and if at the same time there is a united international response through the United Nations Security Council, with China coming on board, to Iran's breach of its obligations under the NPT, we will send a clear signal about the importance of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty, which came into force 40 years ago, in 1970. This is a very important year. If, however, the NPT conference is a failure and we do not get effective international measures against Iran, we could be in for a very dangerous and difficult time and the number of nuclear weapons states could significantly increase during the rest of this decade.