Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

No. I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that the emerging threats from China show NATO was right to make cyber and space among the key frontiers, along with the traditional three, and that, when looking at defence procurement and how money is spent, we are world leading in these vital areas of defence?

[James Heappey]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, but we should not think that our competition with China is exclusively concentrated on the high-end warfighting capabilities that may or may not be required in the first and second island chains. Every single week, we compete with China for influence around the world. Maintaining the defence effort across the global south to protect our interests around the Commonwealth is every bit as important as preparing to stand alongside the US in anything that might happen in the Pacific.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend and I will debate keenly the future of the land battle, but I am not sure that what we have seen on our TV screens over the past few weeks has been a justification for large amounts of massed armour. I think it is entirely a vindication of a change in the way in which the land battle is prosecuted. If forces are massed, they are vulnerable to missile technologies, which are absolutely in the ascendancy. I think that Future Soldier and the integrated review, which gave birth to that, are exactly the right way to develop the Army to meet the requirements of the land battle as it is now and not perhaps how we thought it was 20 years ago.

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

Supporting NATO allies is about not just the eastern front and the situation in and around Russia, but the threat from Russian naval activity. Does my hon. Friend agree that the focus must equally be on the activities of Russian submarines in the north Atlantic, around our allied coast, and that the Navy must be given equal consideration in regard to our strategic strength moving forward?

[James Heappey]

Submarine operations in the north Atlantic are not routinely spoken about in public, but my right hon. Friend will be reassured to know that we are acutely aware that we must maintain awareness of what Russia is doing in the whole Euro-Atlantic and that the focus should not just be on the obvious point of conflict in Ukraine. There is a belligerence to the way in which Russia is doing its business right now, which means that this is the time for maximum vigilance for the UK and the alliance, so that we make sure that all threats to the homeland are properly countered.

Loss of Secret Documents

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I have already confirmed that the MOD police are involved in this process, but I can assure the right hon. Lady that all those whose involvement in the investigation is relevant and appropriate will be involved. She is absolutely right to refer to the ongoing threat to our national security in cyber terms as well as in the context of physical documents, and we as a Government ensure that we have the right advice from the right professionals in the right way.

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

I believe my hon. Friend said that the documents were reported missing last Tuesday, and of course HMS Defender was hassled on Wednesday. The investigation will say whether there was a link between those two incidents, but what it raises in my mind is the information that has come out about the situation in Afghanistan. It is a very tense situation right now, with the Americans withdrawing and the problems we are hearing about. Is the Ministry of Defence now reassessing the plans with our allies, including the Americans? We do not know at the moment what information there may be on the ground in Afghanistan and the security threat that it represents, including for ongoing security issues. Is my hon. Friend having conversations with our allies about potentially needing to reassess the next 12 months in Afghanistan?

[Jeremy Quin]

I can reassure my right hon. Friend that we constantly update and keep abreast of developments on the ground in Afghanistan and indeed in other theatres, but I would not wish to alarm him. There is an investigation under way that will test what information was in those documents, whether they have been returned and what mitigating actions, if any, need to be taken as a result.

Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

First of all, yes, and we can. Secondly, if the hon. Gentleman really wants to know what is morale-sapping, it is something I experienced under his Government and, indeed, the Conservative Government: sitting in the back of something that is unprotected and vulnerable to the people who want to kill you.

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

I very much welcome this defence review: it is a proper look at the threats as they evolve and at what is moving forward, which is a welcome change from what has gone on in the past. However, we must also recognise that article 42 of the Lisbon treaty, on permanent structured co-operation, puts at real risk the NATO alliance, especially given—as we have seen in the past weeks—the unreliability of the EU and the commitments it makes. Our naval presence is going to be so important to our trade routes and protection of our data cables, so I ask my right hon. Friend whether he will have the capability after this review to react quickly and upgrade our naval capability if, sadly, we cannot rely on allies we thought we could rely on.

[Mr Wallace]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. NATO, first and foremost, is the guarantor of European security; no other organisation is, and we do not forget that. Of course, we sit around as NATO Defence Ministers and Foreign Ministers and discuss that with all those partners. There is a proper process of verifying and holding to account our commitments, which is why the national readiness initiative that, predominantly, the United States kicked off a few years ago was all about making sure we were ready and able. It is a constant process of being validated and making sure we can deliver what we are supposed to, and NATO publishes its annual reports and does indeed hold us to account. We are confident that we can do that, but also, as the second biggest spender in NATO and with a large group of forces—despite the narrative that is being put out by the Opposition—we are capable of doing concurrent operations and other types of operations if needed.

Covid-19 Response: Defence Support

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Lady will remember that, at the beginning, we did indeed devolve military assets to CASEVAC patients who were ill to England. Indeed, we had earmarked and agreed a MACA request for the use of defence estate at Kinnegar and Aldergrove at the time. We do have support, and have been preparing support, to allow NHS staff to refocus or to be released on to the frontline. We are awaiting that MACA request; we believe that there is one inbound. We will obviously accept any request and look at it on its merits, but from the point of view of the MOD, and of the UK Government, there is no specific bias towards any part of the United Kingdom. As the requests come in from the civilian authorities of the devolved Administrations, we are ready, willing and able to meet them.

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

Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the critical task of the defence of our nation and our commitment to NATO operations and exercises are not being compromised in order to provide this support?

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, because I am very happy to inform the House on a periodic basis, perhaps every two weeks or weekly, of the MACA—military aid to the civil authorities—tasks that are being fulfilled. I can place that in the House of Commons Library. In the previous lockdown, we committed more than 10,000 troops. The number is 7,500 at the moment, but we always keep that under review. During the last lockdown, we actually only used at most about 4,000 or 5,000 at any one time, but of course we stand by to help. At the moment, there are over 20 MACAs in place and being used, and as we speak, we are examining some significant asks from a number of local authorities.

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

What his proposed timescale is for the next strategic defence review.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

The Government announced on 21 October that they will conduct a one-year spending review for 2021-22. The implications of that decision for the integrated review are currently being considered. The Government will provide an update to Parliament once this has been decided.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

At the annual NATO Parliamentary Assembly in 2019, a report was published about the growing maritime threat from Russia. Will my right hon. Friend meet me and other members of the Assembly so that we may feed into the review of forward and ongoing naval demands for the foreseeable future?

[Mr Wallace]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his work in leading the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. The UK, along with NATO allies, takes the maritime threat from Russia very seriously. This tempo and assertiveness of our operational output will continue for as long as Russia continues to pose a threat and challenge to freedom of navigation. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces would be delighted to meet him and his colleagues to discuss it further.

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[Mr Speaker]

That’s the way to do it.

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

Now that we have left the EU, what assessment and representations is my right hon. Friend making about inter-operational ability in procurement done by EU members through the permanent structured co-operation, PESCO?

[The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)]

As a leading European ally, we work closely with allied nations and do not need formal EU programmes to do so. However, I understand that the EU is in the final stages of agreeing third country participation rules for PESCO, and we look forward to seeing them in due course.

Middle East: Security

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am not going to rule out anything. The UK will do what it has to do to defend its persons—its citizens—wherever it needs to; that is our duty. We cannot say what is in the minds of Iran or anybody else in the future, and that is why we will always reserve our right to take that decision at the time.

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

Events like this have an immediate impact on all our constituents, and my constituents will be noticing the oil price rising, with concerns about their household budgets. That brings us back to the strait of Hormuz. For the last 70 years, NATO has had a policy of deterrence working as prevention. Will my right hon. Friend meet his counterparts in our NATO allies to discuss the possibility of using NATO maritime resources to put protection forces in place that would act as a deterrent, rather than having to react to any activity that takes place?

[Mr Wallace]

My right hon. Friend makes a really good suggestion, and I will take it up at the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting for him. He is right. We already have a number of international coalitions in the strait, such as on anti-piracy, which even involves China, and the International Maritime Security Construct, where we are working with the Americans on protecting our tankers. He is right; tanker wars, as they were called in the 1980s, have been around for a long time. The Iranians used to fire rocket-propelled grenades at tankers back then, deliberately to spike the oil price. He makes a good suggestion.

NATO

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about readiness and our ability to respond. I will touch on that later in my speech, so the hon. Gentleman should feel free to intervene then if I need to make something clear.

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

Going back to the naval issue and equipping NATO, does my right hon. Friend agree that that is about not just increasing the level of spending to 2%, but where it is invested? The Royal Navy is going through a period of complete renewal and will have some of the most advanced ships and capabilities in the world. Will he be making representations, especially at the NATO summit, about the need to review matters and have leading technologies, particularly against the threat of Russian naval technology? After the failure of the Zumwalt-class destroyers and its return to the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the United States is going backwards with some of its technology.

[Gavin Williamson]

We can be proud of our investments in new technology, such as the new Poseidon aircraft that will operate over the north Atlantic or the Type 26 frigates that are currently being constructed in Glasgow. We are leading the world in the development of and investment in technology. Nations such as the United States actually look to us to take that leadership, to point the way forward and to take responsibility for ensuring that the north Atlantic routes remain safe.

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

This has been a very wide-ranging and cross-party debate, with Members agreeing on many areas. In the brief time I have, I want to raise one issue that worries me immensely about the future of NATO and how it operates. We will need more time on the Floor of the House for this, which I will seek from the Leader of the House during business questions at some point. It is the issue of PESCO—the permanent structured co-operation of the European Union.

There must be an honest conversation, in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at least, about how NATO’s command and control structures will actually work given the adoption of PESCO, which was signed on 11 December 2017. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) made a point about how long it would take to get a security force into the Baltic states, but that is not actually what NATO is for. It is there as a reinforcement force, and a state should be able to hold the line for 72 hours before NATO comes in and defends it, although that is probably not long enough.

As I see it, there is a problem with PESCO. I urge colleagues to go away and read article 42 of the Lisbon treaty. Specifically, it says of

“a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides”,

that the Council

“shall in that case recommend to the Member States the adoption of such a decision in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.”

The phrase “their respective constitutional requirements” creates one of the problems in that constitutionally, in German law, Germany cannot be part of an aggressive pact. There are therefore question marks in relation to the operation of PESCO.

PESCO seeks to do many of the things that people recognise that NATO should do, including purchasing equipment efficiently and using it in the best way, but that actually clashes with the constitutional restraints on some NATO states. If the argument for PESCO is about having a European border force, are all European nations going to sign up to it in a way that means they will enforce the direction the Italians are now going in?

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I will not give way.

I believe we need at a future date to spend time in the House discussing the relationship between PESCO and NATO in order to advise the NATO Parliamentary Assembly how to take this forward.

[Mr Speaker]

That is extremely generous of the hon. Gentleman.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The French Defence Minister is Monsieur Jean-Yves Le Drian, whom I met last Thursday—I think it was the 21st time I have met him in two years—and the South Korean Prime Minister is Madam Park, whom I met during her most recent visit. The difficulty facing the shadow Defence Secretary is that none of my Defence Ministers know who he is.

However, on the budget, this is an increasing defence budget; we are committed to meeting the 2% target and the defence budget will also rise in real terms for every year of this Parliament.

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

T3. What steps is my hon. Friend taking to assist current and former personnel who are concerned about the health effects of being prescribed Lariam anti-malarials when deployed overseas?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)]

The Ministry of Defence takes the health and wellbeing of its personnel seriously and acknowledges its duty of care to provide the best possible support to them. I am delighted to be able to confirm today that, as part of that care, we have introduced a single point of contact providing information on mefloquine and signposting a range of services to help those who have concerns having taken Lariam. Further details are available on the gov.uk website.

Trident

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara]

The hon. Gentleman’s support is very much appreciated.

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

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. As I understood it, he said that without nuclear submarines at Faslane, and with the separation of Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom, he would seek to have a naval base with ships at Faslane. He also said that he considered it a waste of money to build new hardware for the Navy because that money could be better spent on welfare. Those points do not seem to marry up.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but at no point have we said that we will double-spend that money. Scotland’s share of the money that we would save by not renewing Trident would be in the region of £15 billion over the lifetime of Trident, and that money could be invested in conventional defence and in turning Faslane from a nuclear submarine port to a state-of-the-art conventional naval base.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O'Hara]

I will make some progress.

The possession of top-end military capabilities without the ability to exercise them effectively is known in strategic parlance as a hollow force. To put that in a more colloquial way, we are acting as though we have a fur coat and nae knickers. Trident is a military and political ego trip paid for on the backs of the poor.

The UK independent nuclear deterrent is not all that independent. I refer hon. Members to the Defence Committee report of 30 June 2006, which states that the fact that

“in theory, the British Prime Minister could give the order to fire Trident missiles without getting prior approval from the White House has allowed the UK to maintain the façade of being a global military power. In practice, though, it is difficult to conceive of any situation in which a Prime Minister would fire Trident without prior US approval.”

In reality, it will be a US commander-in-chief who will ultimately decide. In 18 months’ time, that commander-in-chief could be President Donald Trump. Does anyone seriously think that Trident makes the world a safer place?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Brendan O'Hara]

I have already given way once to the hon. Gentleman. Let me press on.

Everyone accepts that the world has never been a more uncertain place. The world is changing and the threats are changing. They are most certainly not as they were 30 or 40 years ago. Many military strategists recognise that the changes have to be prepared for accordingly. They have identified important threats. There is mass migration into mega cities; by 2040, it is thought that 70% of the world will be urbanised. The great movement of people because of climate change and the search for natural resources, such as water and energy, will cause huge global problems too.

We are increasingly engaged in an ideological war with terrorism. Hybrid warfare and cyber-attacks will be among our enemies’ main weapons. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself said that Daesh was an existential threat to the United Kingdom. We have to assume, sadly, that after the evil of Daesh is destroyed other ideologically driven groups will emerge. Looking ahead, in many ways the traditional nation state will not be the main enemy. Why then, given the radical changes happening in the world, is the UK’s response exactly as it was 30 or 40 years ago—nuclear-armed submarines at sea 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, with nuclear missiles pointed at and designed to obliterate European cities?

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[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.

[Chris Law]

I am intrigued by what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Following the logic about Russia invading Ukraine, and given that we have this deterrent, surely it did not work in that situation.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because his intervention makes my point: there was no deterrent to stop Russia going into Ukraine because President Putin rightly recognised that President Obama would not intervene in international affairs. There were no checks and balances—no counterweight to what has become a new superpower. Putin just walked in, and was allowed to do so.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that Ukraine was persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons, and as a result Putin has been able to ride roughshod over international agreements?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Exactly. I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

This debate is not about war-mongering. It is not about a desire to launch nuclear weapons; it is the direct opposite. It is about the fact that a nuclear deterrent has prevented major world conflicts, but today we see that there are conflicts taking place. We talk about Daesh getting its hands on nuclear weapons, or about North Korea, which would be able to launch an attack on South Korea. Let us not forget that there was never a peace treaty between North Korea and South Korea. Technically they are still at war, but they have been able to face each other off with conventional weapons for several decades. If that game changed with nuclear weapons, there would have to be western intervention concerning South Korea to make sure that it could counteract that threat from North Korea; otherwise, hundreds of thousands of innocent people would be murdered by a regime with no other intention than wiping out its neighbour. That is what a deterrent prevents. That is why this debate is so important.

Nobody in this Chamber, nobody in NATO, nobody in the western world and probably not even President Putin would want to use nuclear weapons. That is not what this debate is about. It is about making sure that when something exists, those enemies who would use it do not have the opportunity to do so because they know it would be pointless. North Korea will not launch a nuclear weapon at South Korea if it knows that 10 seconds later it would disappear off the face of the map as well. However unpalatable that truth may be, that is the truth that has kept the peace.

If we consider the first world war, and then the second world war, which was fought with conventional weapons but had a much higher death toll and in which far more civilians were killed than in the first world war, we see that as technology advances and wars increase, more and more of the civilian population die. It was noticeable that when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box earlier this week, he made it absolutely clear that military action that may be considered in Syria would be part of a wider programme with targeted intervention to try to prevent civilian deaths. Western leaders today spend most of their time trying to work out how we can intervene to reduce civilian deaths, and there is nothing better for that than having the Government who may be pushing their people into war know that they themselves would be wiped out. That is hugely important.

There has been a lot of talk about whether Trident is the right thing to spend money on. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence said, it amounts to 0.2% of GDP. What would a war, even one fought with conventional weapons to which we may not be able to respond, do to the GDP of Europe, of the western world?

[John Glen]

Would my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that the £31 billion is rather less than the debt interest payment that we are still having to make as a consequence of the legacy of the previous Government?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I agree with my hon. Friend, although I do not want to be too skewed towards other debates. My hon. Friend’s comment is important, though, because this country cannot have a solid defence or a capable strategic defence review unless we have a strong economy. That has to go hand in hand with this debate.

None of us today wants to renew Trident because we are war-mongers. We are the exact opposite. But we have to be aware of the threats in our world—threats that we have to be capable of responding to even though we hope that we never have to respond to them. The last 70-odd years has proved that. In the Cuban missile crisis, when President Kennedy said that we were eyeball to eyeball with the Russians, they backed down because they knew that doing otherwise would mean the destruction of their own country as well as the country that they were attacking. That is the proof that, however unpalatable Trident renewal may be, the nuclear deterrent works.

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[Dr Lewis]

That point leads directly to the question of what it means to say that we are “using” Trident. Those of us who believe that the possession of a deadly weapon is the best method of stopping other people who possess similar deadly weapons from using them against us, say that Trident is in use every day of the week, and if ever the button had to be pressed, it would have totally failed in its purpose.

My second argument is that it is not the weapons themselves that we have to fear but the nature of the regimes that possess them. Whereas democracies are generally reluctant to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear dictatorships—although they did against Japan in 1945—the reverse is not true. Let us consider what might have happened if in 1982 a non-nuclear Britain had been facing an Argentina in possession of even just a few tactical nuclear bombs and the means of delivering them. Would we then have dared to use our conventional forces against its inferior conventional forces?

The third argument is that the United Kingdom has traditionally played a more important and decisive role in preserving freedom than other medium-sized democracies have been able, or willing, to do. Democratic countries without nuclear weapons have little choice but either to declare themselves neutral and hope for the best or to rely on the nuclear umbrella of their powerful allies. We are a nuclear power already, and it is also much harder to defeat us by conventional means because of the existence of the English channel.

The fourth argument is that because the United States is our closest ally, if the continent of Europe were ever occupied and the nuclear forces of the United States had not been used, an enemy might feel that they could attack us with nuclear weapons with impunity.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

For those who say that our nuclear deterrent is in the hands of the Americans, what does my right hon. Friend make of the fact that every Prime Minister has to write a letter held in every submarine that is never, ever seen unless in the most dire circumstances?

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. There is no question but that the Trident nuclear system is entirely autonomous. Indeed, nothing—not the Americans, not any form of cyber-bug—can possibly intervene if, heaven forbid, the worst happened, the United Kingdom were attacked in part or in whole and the submarine commander had to open the dreaded letter written by the Prime Minister.

The fifth and final military argument is the most important of all. I put this to people when they try to say, “Well, you’re inflicting cuts on our conventional capability.” The argument is that there is no quantity of conventional forces that can compensate for the military disadvantage that faces a non-nuclear country in a war against a nuclear-armed enemy. The atomic bombing of Japan is a perfect example, not only because the Emperor was forced to surrender, but because what of might have happened under the reverse scenario: if Japan had developed atomic bombs in the summer of 1945 and the allies had not, a conventional allied invasion to end the war would have been out of the question.

The debate should and will go on, and I congratulate SNP Members on giving us the opportunity to take part in it today.