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Speech in Westminster Parliament Gavin Strang |
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| 14 March 2007 | ||
Dr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East) (Lab): The House should not forget that the scale of indiscriminate destruction that can be unleashed by a single nuclear warhead is unparalleled. It was Nikita Khrushchev who said that in a nuclear war, the survivors would envy the dead. Almost by definition, nuclear weapons inflict death and suffering on civilians, and the suffering is not confined to those present at the blast. Descendants of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still being born with genetic defects today. The House will be aware that the current generation of so-called small nuclear weapons are many times more powerful than the two dropped in Japan at the end of the second world war. I spent most of my political life during the cold war. There was a very real fear in Europe in particular that there really would be a nuclear war. There was a recognition on the part of many of the leading countries, including the United States and Britain, that if nothing were done, it would only be a matter of time before a large number of countries acquired nuclear weapons. This was a terrifying prospect. Clearly the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the greater the chance that they will be used. It is against this background that the international community, with Britain playing a major role, resolved that the world should instead become free of nuclear weapons. In 1968, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was agreed, and it was ratified in 1970. At the heart of the treaty is a deal between the non-nuclear weapons states and the nuclear weapons states. The non-nuclear weapons states agreed not to seek to acquire nuclear weapons; in return, those states get assistance with civil uses of nuclear energy and, crucially, the promise of complete nuclear disarmament from the nuclear weapons states. It is generally believed that the non-proliferation regime, with the non-proliferation treaty at its heart, has played an important role in curbing the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the nine or so states currently believed to hold them. The treaty is, as Ministers have put it, the cornerstone of the international non-proliferation and disarmament regime. The end of the cold war brought a window of opportunity to make real progress in fully implementing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The tragedy is that this is not the way in which it is turning out. In recent years, there has been growing disillusionment among the non-nuclear weapons states. They fear that the nuclear weapons states are not prepared to fulfil their disarmament obligations. The world’s non-proliferation mechanisms desperately need strengthening. That window of opportunity still exists. No country is better placed than Britain to make a major contribution internationally in this field. After all, neither Britain nor western Europe is subject to any direct military threat and the Government have stated that no such threat is foreseen. This is the time when Britain should be taking the initiative to encourage nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. It is profoundly depressing that the Government want to procure a new generation of Trident. The decision to buy a new generation of Trident would damage non-proliferation efforts. After all, we have an obligation to move towards complete disarmament, and making provision to renew Trident clearly runs counter to that obligation. We seek to persuade non-nuclear weapons states not to pursue nuclear weapons programmes, and we seek to persuade the international community of the need to strengthen the world’s non-proliferation mechanisms. Those exhortations will be met with increasing cynicism if, at the same time as we make them, we buy a new generation of Trident. It will not be just our credibility that is damaged—faith in the world’s non-proliferation regimes will be further undermined. By renewing Trident we will effectively say to other countries that nuclear weapons are so vital that we are prepared to spend billions of pounds to make sure that we have them in the 2020s and beyond, even though the Government admit that we do not face a foreseeable direct military threat. Far from persuading other nations to remain non-nuclear, we will send a signal that nuclear weapons are vital. The Government argue that we should renew Trident, not because of any foreseeable threat, but because we cannot accurately predict the nature of the world in 30 or 50 years’ time. Surely, the same is true for any country in the world. Germany, Japan and Egypt, for example, do not know what threats will face them in the 2020s and beyond. There is nothing in the Government’s justification for renewing Trident that does not apply to every country in the world. That clearly undermines our argument that non-nuclear weapon states should continue to forgo nuclear weapons. The Government rightly say that we do not know what the future holds, but we can be sure that a decision not to renew Trident would avoid the damage that would be done to non-proliferation efforts if we go ahead with renewal. I would like the UK to decommission Trident. Other countries have given up nuclear weapons: South Africa abandoned its nuclear programme, as has Libya, and Ukraine got rid of its nuclear weapons too. We applauded those countries for the course that they took. None of the countries that abandoned their nuclear programmes are any less secure, and neither would we be. Indeed, Britain would be a safer place if we did not renew Trident because, first, we would avoid the detrimental impact of Trident renewal on the non-proliferation regimes and, secondly, we could spend our defence budget more effectively. Instead of spending £20 billion on renewing Trident and £1.5 every year running it, Britain could put more resources into defence equipment and operations more relevant to our security needs in the 21st century. The prospect of nuclear proliferation is as dreadful today as it was in the 1960s, when the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was agreed. This is a critical period, and the decisions that we make today will have an important bearing on the deployment of nuclear weapons world wide. Consideration of whether to procure a new generation of nuclear weapons should take place in the context of the role that Britain should play in the world today. My vision of Britain is of a leader in global non-proliferation, keeping our commitments and strengthening the world’s nuclear safeguards, which is why I will vote against the renewal of Trident. |