Nuclear Weapons

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for initiating this debate. She reminded us that, on 7 July last year, 122 countries at the UN headquarters in New York endorsed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—the ban treaty, as noble Lords have called it. The eight officially recognised nuclear weapons states, plus the unofficially recognised Israel, boycotted the process. I reiterate what my noble friends Lord Browne and Lord Judd said: the ban treaty is born out of perceived frustration by many states at the lack of progress in recent years on nuclear disarmament through the non-proliferation treaty, which was the only multilateral treaty that contained a binding commitment to nuclear disarmament through a gradual process based on good faith.

As my noble friend Lord Judd reminded us, it was a Labour Government who signed the non-proliferation treaty in 1968. In its 2017 manifesto, Labour committed to support the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent while advocating greater UK leadership in creating stronger multilateral efforts with the global community and the United Nations in order to achieve a nuclear weapons-free world. Only four countries are not a party to the NPT treaty—North Korea left the NPT, and India, Israel and Pakistan never joined it—but it commits 185 states never to develop nuclear weapons. The UK, the USA, China, Russia and France already had nuclear weapons by 1968. Since 1970, there have been review conferences every five years to pursue an incremental approach to nuclear disarmament, which noble Lords pointed out, through Article VI of the treaty. The NPT has of course come under stress in recent years, most notably at the last quinquennial NPT review in 2015. That ended without a consensus on what actions should be taken over the next five years to pursue the goal of nuclear disarmament, the first time that this has happened since 1970.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, stated, the ban treaty’s main provisions are that member states are banned from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons. As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, reminded us, though, the first major inadequacy of the ban treaty is that even though two-thirds of UN member states endorsed it, there was no involvement of the major players in nuclear deterrence. The legal provision banning the stationing, installation or deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of a member state has implications for NATO countries such as Germany, Italy and Turkey, which have US nuclear weapons on their soil. As we have heard in this debate, polarisation between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states could be magnified by the ban treaty. As noble Lords have made clear, we should see this as a wake-up call for the countries that possess nuclear weapons to act.

The United Kingdom has been seen as one of the more progressive nuclear states, leading the way in advocating diplomatic, technological and financial policies to pursue nuclear disarmament, and it has led the way in multilateral approaches to pursue that agenda. Labour has historically been more progressive in finding solutions to nuclear disarmament and continues to be so today. Under Gordon Brown’s premiership, Labour offered a “grand global bargain” that would reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles among nuclear weapons states and vowed to cut the number of Trident submarines from four to three. The Brown Government maintained the UK’s position as the most progressive nuclear weapons state in 2008 by setting up the P5 process, the first forum between the P5 set up specifically to discuss matters surrounding nuclear disarmament, and we also had the UK-Norway initiative. Unfortunately, that process has been reduced in importance by the current Government.

This is the crux of the debate. All noble Lords have asked: where are the initiatives by this Government to maintain the commitments and pathways set out in the NPT? There do not seem to be any. As my noble friend Lord West said, the key to this process has to be a much stronger level of communication and dialogue. That is the way forward. I want to hear from the Minister tonight exactly how the Government are going to engage, particularly with the US President’s reviews that have been announced. How are we going to engage and communicate across the P5? How do we reinvigorate the process so that we avoid the threats that we have heard identified in this debate? How do we reduce tensions and the threat that nuclear weapons pose?