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Speech in Scottish Parliament Nicola Sturgeon |
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| 21 December 2006 | ||
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Nicola Sturgeon (Glasgow) (SNP): A recent opinion poll asked people in Scotland whether they thought that this Parliament should have the power to decide whether nuclear weapons remained on the Clyde, and 61 per cent said yes. Unfortunately, we do not yet have that power, but we have the opportunity today to make our voice heard. We can speak on behalf of the vast majority of people in Scotland who oppose the replacement of the Trident nuclear system. I ask MSPs in all parties who have honourably opposed Trident over many years to vote today with their conscience; I ask for all of us to say loudly and clearly to the United Kingdom Government, "Think again." I will set out the case against Trident renewal, which is first and foremost a moral case. Each and every Trident warhead is a weapon of mass destruction in its own right. The detonation of just one would kill more than 200,000 people. Trident is morally indefensible. A Prime Minister who took this country into an illegal war in search of weapons of mass destruction that did not even exist should, if there was a shred of principle or consistency in his arguments, understand that better than anyone. The case against Trident is not just moral; it is also about how to make this world of ours a safer place to live in. We live in uncertain times, but the replacement of Trident risks making the world more dangerous, not less. It will not help the process of disarmament and non-proliferation; it will hinder that process. There are those, including the First Minister, who have tried to characterise the debate as a choice between multilateral and unilateral disarmament. In their world, those who back a new Trident just want to have something to bargain away; in their view, the rest of us would give up something for nothing. I would say simply this: read the white paper carefully. It is not a route map to disarmament. On the contrary, it seeks to defend nuclear weapons in principle. It makes the case for keeping them in the UK for the next 50 years. Perhaps worst of all, it does not rule out a first-strike nuclear attack. That is why we must oppose the proposals in the white paper. The white paper's central premise is that a country is safer with nuclear weapons than without. That argument is fundamentally wrong. Eight countries in the world have nuclear weapons; 180 do not—and they are no less safe because of it. Being nuclear free is the international norm, and we should be striving to make it even more so and to make Scotland normal in that regard. However, the argument is not just wrong but is inherently dangerous. It provides a rationale for any other country that is trying to justify having nuclear weapons of its own. Tony Blair says in the white paper that nuclear weapons are "the ultimate assurance of our national security." But every Government wants to protect its country's national security, and rogue Governments will always use national security as an excuse to do whatever they want to do. There is absolutely nothing to stop any of them using Tony Blair's argument to justify developing nuclear weapons of their own. In truth, many of them will use that argument and the end result will be not disarmament, but an acceleration of the nuclear arms race. That is why anyone who genuinely believes in reducing the nuclear threat in our world must oppose the proposals in the white paper. It is not just the logic of the Government's argument that would make the world a much more dangerous place to live in, but its sheer and blatant hypocrisy. It is hypocrisy for the United Kingdom to maintain a nuclear deterrent while arguing that other countries should not develop one. That hypocrisy is deeply damaging in today's world and rides roughshod over the non-proliferation treaty. This may come as news to Tony Blair and the supporters of a new Trident, but that treaty does not give the privileged nuclear club carte blanche to do whatever it likes. That treaty was a bargain. Countries that did not have nuclear weapons promised not to develop them and in return the five nuclear states, including the UK, promised that they would negotiate in good faith to achieve disarmament. That was the quid pro quo. Replacing Trident would be a breach of our side of that bargain, which would make it much more difficult to persuade others to keep theirs. Phil Gallie (South of Scotland) (Con): Over recent years, the UK has given up air, ground and operational theatre nuclear weapons. What effect has that had on other countries that are still intent on developing them? Col 30685 Nicola Sturgeon: The idea that the UK has had nuclear disarmament in recent years does not hold water. In the white paper, Tony Blair says that he wants to reduce warheads by 20 per cent, but if we read the small print we find that the number of warheads that will remain deployed at sea will stay the same. It is the warheads that are already in reserve that we are going to get rid of. It is double-speak and it is spin. Trident makes this world a more dangerous place. The key questions are these: for what and at what cost? Like my colleagues in the Scottish National Party, I have always been opposed to nuclear weapons, but at least, during the cold war, they had some sort of rationale. We knew who they were pointed at and what they were designed to deter. The threats in today's world are entirely different. Nuclear weapons will not deter suicide bombers. In an uncertain world, where would Trident be targeted? That question, which was posed by Jim Wallace only two weeks ago, has still not been answered. The suspicion lingers that the decision to replace Trident is more about building monuments to Tony Blair than it is about national security. If we do not speak out now, we will all pay a heavy price for it; £25 billion is a conservative estimate of the financial cost. I, for one, would rather see that money spent on health, education and pensions, and on ensuring decent conditions and equipment for our conventional forces, which have been badly let down by this Government. For all those reasons, I believe that the proposals in the white paper must be opposed. This is our chance as a Parliament—as the Scottish Parliament—to speak up for common sense. I urge all members to seize that opportunity today. I move, That the Parliament notes the publication by the UK Government of its White Paper on the future of the Trident nuclear missile system on Monday 4 December 2006; recognises the need for a full debate to explore the military, economic and political consequences of Trident renewal and believes that a convincing case can be made, in military, economic and political terms, for the non-replacement of Trident, and calls on the UK Government not to go ahead at this time with the proposal in the White Paper.
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