Multilateral Disarmament

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, that is clearly a constant concern and the noble Lord is right to raise it. Against that background, the UK continues to push for the early start of negotiations, without preconditions, on a fissile material cut-off treaty in the Conference on Disarmament. We supported a Canadian-backed resolution at the United Nations first committee on that topic, in October. In this country we have a voluntary moratorium on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other explosive devices. We have not produced fissile material for nuclear weapons since 1995.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, in 1968 the UK signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and, as the noble Earl said, a lot of progress has been made since then. President Reagan met with President Gorbachev in Helsinki in 1986, and that resulted in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. What encouragement will the Government give to President-elect Trump to talk to his friend President Putin to kick-start multilateral talks on further reduction, in time for the 50th anniversary of the NPT in 2018?

[Earl Howe]

I hope the noble Baroness will be glad to know that at the appropriate time we will convey to President-elect Trump the importance of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We should not underestimate the role it has played for almost five decades in helping to limit proliferation and provide a framework for disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Nearly all United Nations member states are signed up to it—that is a tremendously important point in its favour. That treaty should form the basis on which we make progress in this area.