Trident

Debate between Alec Shelbrooke and Sheryll Murray

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I was concerned to read that the motion for this debate has only one sentence:

“That this House believes that Trident should not be renewed.”

There is not much substance behind that, and as the debate goes on it worries me more and more. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) has questioned the legality of Trident. That is a matter for legal debate, but the fact is that it and nuclear weapons exist.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Given that so many nations have nuclear deterrents, does my hon. Friend agree that someone would have looked into that? Perhaps the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) should admit that she is wrong or that her argument is based on a personal interpretation.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

As my hon. Friend makes clear, a lot of legal advice on issues such as this is a matter of interpretation. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and say that we will not be involved in something that exists. The fact is that a nuclear threat exists.

About three years ago, the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who is no longer in his place, and I went to Ukraine, to Kiev. This was after the Russian intervention in that area. As was mentioned earlier, the Budapest agreement of 1994 made it clear that, in return for unilateral disarmament, Ukraine’s borders would be protected by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation. Yet, when the Russian Federation walked in, nothing could be done. As I mentioned in Foreign Office questions earlier today, the world’s attention may have shifted to the situation in the middle east and Syria, but there is a live war going on today in Ukraine. I hold the United States partly responsible for that, because a weak foreign policy by what I consider to be one of the worst Presidents of the United States has allowed Russia to take strategic decisions and walk into countries such as Ukraine, knowing that there was no deterrent. Deterrence is what this debate is about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) said, no one has a burglar alarm because they want people to burgle their house; they have one as a deterrent. It is incredible that in a world that is so dangerous and becoming more so, we have a debate whose purpose is to try to disarm us as if the rest of the world would then fall into line.