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Global Security (Non-Proliferation)

A day when the papers contain so many well deserved tributes to Michael Foot is surely a good day to be discussing nuclear weapons, and if I may say so, Mr. Williams, it is fine to have a Member who represents a Welsh constituency in the Chair, given the many great years of service that Michael Foot gave his constituents in Wales. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, and will be brief, as I know that many hon. Members want to speak in the debate. I am old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis. I remember the real fear of the students, and particularly the lecturers, at the university of Edinburgh institute of animal genetics, where I was studying. I have lived most of my life during the cold war, and there is no doubt in my mind that the threat of nuclear war was very serious for these islands, for Europe and indeed for the whole world. It was John F. Kennedy who said that if we did nothing, there would be a considerable number of nuclear states. He reckoned that it would be about 25 in the 1970s. That has not happened, and I believe that it is largely because of the grand bargain, as the Government and the Select Committee have called it—namely the non-proliferation treaty between the nuclear weapons states and the non-nuclear weapons states. We have, of course, the official nuclear weapon states and the unofficial nuclear weapon states, but I shall not elaborate on the implications of that, because of the time. I am glad that reference has already been made to the state visit by the President of the Republic of South Africa, as this is a good time to acknowledge that South Africa took a conscious decision to abandon its nuclear weapons. The NPT is, as the Government have described it, a grand bargain. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) admirably made the point that the agreement of the US to sell nuclear fission material to India was a major undermining of the treaty. India, of course, is a non-NPT country. These are challenging times. As I said, North Korea claims to have manufactured nuclear weapons. Only on Monday, Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, stated that his organisation could not confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is being used for peaceful activities because Iran had not provided the agency with the necessary co-operation. In addition, the threat of terrorist efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and materials is a continual concern nowadays. The Government's document "The Road to 2010" makes a valuable contribution. I pay tribute to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, whose report I referred to in our last debate on nuclear weapons proliferation—an Adjournment debate on 9 July last year that I initiated. Since then, of course, the Government have published not only "The Road to 2010" but their response to the Select Committee's report. The latter is an excellent document, containing a good range of material. In their response, the Government reiterate their support for a nuclear-free middle east. A few moments ago, I referred to unofficial nuclear weapons states, but it would help if the Minister were to set out the Government's view of progress towards a nuclear-free middle east. Reference has already been made to Iran. It is important that we see movement from the United States toward ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty. The policy of President Obama, reiterated last month by his Vice-President, is that the US should ratify the treaty, but that may not be straightforward, because ratification would require 67 votes in the Senate. There are many important issues to be covered in May: disarmament, safeguards, consequences for treaty violation and consequences for withdrawal from the treaty are among them. There is also a need for a fissile material cut-off treaty. That is being considered by the conference on disarmament, the arena where the matter is discussed, but I understand it has hit the doldrums. If I may take issue with just one word of the Committee's report it would be the use of the word "critical" in relation to the forthcoming review conference. The word is used by both the Government and the Select Committee. My fear is that it implies that if the review conference does not succeed, that is the end of the treaty, but as has been pointed out, the review conference five years ago was a total farce. We do not know what will happen in May, but to use the word "critical" is a little dangerous, because when it comes to the spread of nuclear weapons to various states, there is no other game in town. We desperately hope that progress will be made because that is so important for the future of this country and of the world, but we have to bear in mind that we need to move forward. We certainly do not want to encourage the idea that, if things do not work out in May and we do not make the progress that we all want, the NPT will be redundant.