Brendan O'Hara
Main Page: Brendan O'Hara (Scottish National Party - Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber)Department Debates - View all Brendan O'Hara's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(9 years ago)
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Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that Trident should not be renewed.
It is a pleasure to move the motion that stands in my name and the names of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru and the Green party.
The SNP was elected to this place in such numbers in May on a promise to do three things: first, to argue that the maximum possible powers be devolved to the Scottish Parliament, via the full delivery of the vow; secondly, to fight tooth and nail against the failed and divisive policies of austerity, and to protect the poorest and most vulnerable in our society from the worst excesses of this Government; and thirdly, to oppose Trident. By bringing this matter to the Floor of the House today, the SNP can say that within the first six months of being here, we have done exactly what we promised to do. Of course, there is much more that we need to do on all those issues, but no one will ever be able to accuse us of not doing what we said we would do.
In recent months, Trident and the UK’s nuclear—
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Brendan O'Hara
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make some progress.
No one could deny that Trident and the nuclear deterrent have been at the forefront of public debate for many years, not only because this is the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because the United Kingdom will soon decide whether to commit to spending £167,000,000,000 over the lifetime of the Trident programme.
We had high hopes that we would not be a lone voice. When the rank and file of the British Labour party elected the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), an avowed unilateralist, as its leader, SNP Members hoped that there would be serious opposition to Trident. Of course, the mere thought of that caused palpitations among both the red and blue shades of the British establishment. I genuinely wish the right hon. Gentleman well in continuing his robust opposition to Trident.
Mrs Murray
While the hon. Gentleman is outlining the reasons behind the motion, will he explain the SNP’s apparent incoherence during the Scottish referendum campaign, when it pledged to scrap Trident on the one hand and to seek to join NATO, a nuclear alliance, on the other?
Brendan O'Hara
I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not accept for a moment her definition of incoherence. If that was incoherent, the actions of Germany, Spain and many other members of NATO are equally incoherent. I would point—
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Brendan O'Hara
Please, let me finish the answer. I point out to the hon. Lady that the last two Secretaries-General of NATO have been Danish and Norwegian—countries that have exactly the same position that we advocate.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Brendan O'Hara
No, I will make some progress. I realise that you are very keen to get in on this debate—so keen that you left a little message on my door this morning.
Mr Speaker
I am not keen to get into this debate and I did not leave a message on anybody’s door.
Brendan O'Hara
My apologies, Mr Speaker. The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) left a little note on my door this morning. I will come to him.
Mr Speaker
That is a matter of debate. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) has the floor. When it is clear that he is not taking an intervention, he must not be hollered at from a sedentary position by Members on either side of the House. He is free to develop his case.
Brendan O'Hara
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I wish the right hon. Member for Islington North well. I say to Members of his party that being anti-Trident can be a vote winner. The fact that the SNP was returned in such great numbers on an explicitly anti-Trident platform is testimony to that.
In recent weeks, the Scottish Parliament, yet again, reaffirmed its outright and overwhelming opposition to Trident. The Scottish Government, the Scottish TUC, the Scottish Churches and great swathes of Scottish civic society have set their face against Trident.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
Will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to remind us how the different political parties in the Scottish Parliament voted on Trident? What decision was reached at the annual conference of the Scottish Labour party? Does he not think it strange that the single Member of Parliament from the Scottish Labour party, who opposes Trident and whose party opposes Trident, is not even in the Chamber for this debate?
Brendan O'Hara
As my right hon. Friend points out, there is an established consensus among the Scottish political parties against Trident. The Scottish National party, the Scottish Greens, the Scottish Socialists and, as he says, the Scottish Labour party are all opposed to Trident. We have a Government in Westminster with just one elected Member of Parliament from Scotland, representing a party that failed to achieve even 15% of the vote in Scotland, yet they insist that they have the right to foist on Scotland weapons of mass destruction that Scotland has said it does not want.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Does my hon. Friend find it strange to see the contrast between the unified voice from Scotland and the confusion from the Welsh Labour party, which is for Trident and then against Trident, and that is quite apart from the First Minister, who wants to move it down to west Wales?
Brendan O’Hara
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I have been asked a number of times by the media and the press, “Are you doing this simply to embarrass the Labour party?”, but the Labour party needs no assistance from me in embarrassing itself on this matter.
Brendan O'Hara
I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a moment.
I have always argued that there is no moral, economic or military case for Trident, and—let us be absolutely clear—there is no moral case for any state to possess weapons of mass destruction. Possessing the wherewithal to destroy the world and everything in it several times over is not something to be proud of; indeed, it is something to be deeply ashamed of. I know of no creed, belief system or article of faith that has ever said it is okay to hold the threat of annihilation over one’s neighbour, and to disguise it as peacekeeping.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the possession of nuclear weapons serves as a deterrent that has worked well for many years? In 1994 Ukraine unilaterally disarmed, relying on a treaty with Russia that meant it would not invade. That undertaking was broken and Ukraine is now suffering because of the absence of those weapons.
Brendan O'Hara
I will pick up the hon. Gentleman’s point later in my speech. The idea of a deterrent is important and I will address that issue.
Not only is Trident morally questionable, but I believe it is economic madness. In 2006 when the Successor programme was first discussed, the likely cost of building new submarines was put at between £15 billion and £20 billion. Yesterday’s strategic defence and security review put that cost at £31 billion, with £10 billion of contingency on top of that. That is £41 billion set aside to build submarines—the cost has doubled in the last decade, and I shudder to think what it will be in the next decade. Based on the Government’s own figures, the lifetime cost of Trident will be in the region of £167,000,000,000. That is real, taxpayers’ money, and there is no escaping that fact. It may—indeed, it should—embarrass the Labour party that that money has been made on the backs of the poor and the most vulnerable in our society.
The Chancellor appeared at Faslane, appearing out of nowhere like Mr Benn—I mean the cartoon character, not the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn)—to announce £500 million of extensions to jetties. On the same day, the United Nations announced that it would be investigating whether the Government’s policy of cutting welfare support to the disabled was a violation of their human rights.
Brendan O'Hara
I know that the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) is anxious to get involved in the debate, but as the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute I represent Faslane and Coulport, and I live roughly six miles from the base. For decades, my constituents have been told that their jobs and prosperity depend totally on that base.
Martin John Docherty (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
My hon. Friend’s constituency is next to mine. Does he have the same grave concerns that I have about the alarming number of nuclear safety incidents that have been reported at Faslane naval base? There was a 54% increase in the number of incidents reported in 2013-14 compared with 2012-13. Such incidents threaten the safety not only of the workers at Faslane nuclear base—a large proportion of whom live in my constituency —but the communities that surround it.
Mr Speaker
Order. I remind the House that interventions should be extremely brief. It is not proper for a Member to read out what amounts to a mini-speech that purports to be an intervention.
Brendan O’Hara
I agree with my hon. Friend that safety is paramount, and I raised that issue last week in a debate in Westminster Hall. There are huge safety concerns among workers at Faslane about the cuts being made within the nuclear operations department.
I hope my hon. Friends realise that my election in Argyll and Bute suggests that we do not have to put all our eggs in one basket. Let me make it clear that by saying no to Trident, we are not saying no to Faslane—far from it. [Interruption.] The SNP has never, and will never, consider closing the Faslane base. Whether as part of the United Kingdom or—hopefully sooner rather than later—as part of an independent Scotland, Faslane will have a bright, non-nuclear future as a conventional naval base. Faslane is a fantastic facility, and its proximity to the north Atlantic means that its prospects are not dependent on having nuclear submarines based there. [Interruption.]
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Given the outrageous chortling from both sides of the House, does my hon. Friend agree that the only way that the UK establishment parties will support Faslane is if it has nuclear weapons? What a shocking proposal that is.
Brendan O'Hara
I agree with my hon. Friend. Today we have seen through any pretence that the Labour party is somehow taking a radical position on nuclear weapons—it is bewildering.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I assure the hon. Gentleman that some Labour Members support his view. I am one of those, and I intend to vote for the motion this evening.
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.
Several hon. Members rose—
Brendan O'Hara
I will make progress. I have taken a lot of interventions and been very generous.
I have always argued that there is no military case for Trident because it is not a military weapon. Trident is a political weapon that can never, and will never, be used. Nevertheless, it is set to consume between 30% and 50% of the UK defence procurement budget.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman understand that Trident is being used every day? Every moment that we have continuous at-sea deterrence, Trident is being used. The fact that it is never fired in anger is a symbol of its success.
Brendan O'Hara
It will come as no surprise to the right hon. Gentleman that I do not agree with him at all, and I will come on to the point about deterrence.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Brendan O'Hara
I will make progress. I have been very generous up to now.
The money spent on Trident is put into keeping Britain at the top table of the United Nations Security Council. Money that should be doing good—whether through peacekeeping, reacting to emergencies such as the Ebola outbreak, or relieving the humanitarian crises that are currently unfolding in the middle east and north Africa—is being sacrificed on a collective military and political ego trip that has more to do with status than with defence.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Brendan O'Hara
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will make some progress.
Indeed, Members should not just take my word for it. In a Defence Committee evidence session last week, General Sir Richard Shirreff, referring to finding money for Trident, said:
“you either go down the line of nuclear capability at the expense of conventional capability or conventional capability at the expense of nuclear. It seems to be that sort of zero-sum game”.
The problem with Trident is that it puts pressure on the rest of the defence budget to the detriment of our overall security. Even Tony Blair, not someone I seek to quote often in this place, wrote in his memoir about Trident renewal that
“The expense is huge and the utility…non-existent in terms of military use.”
He decided to go down the road of Trident renewal, however, because it would be
“too big a downgrading of our status as a nation.”
Caroline Lucas
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that nuclear weapons are actually making us less, not more, safe? They give out a signal to the rest of the world that the only way to guarantee security is by acquiring nuclear weapons, therefore driving proliferation rather than countering it.
Brendan O'Hara
I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree.
Tony Blair summed it up: the UK’s obsession with having an independent nuclear deterrent is little more than a former imperial power indulging in a desperate search for a better yesterday. Possessing Trident is not about defence; it is about the illusion of continuing past glories regardless of cost. The fact is that we cannot afford it. Pride, it seems, will not let us back down. We would rather cut benefits from the disabled. We would rather take tax credits away from the working poor, as long as the bottomless pit of Trident is fed.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
On affordability, will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Reed
I am exceptionally grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have written to the former First Minister about these issues on a number of occasions and have not yet received any answers. In the event of decommissioning the nuclear fleet and the warheads at Faslane, where in Scotland would the nuclear materials be stored and disposed of, and how much would it cost the Scottish taxpayer?
Brendan O'Hara
Scotland is absolutely set to take its responsibility. Scotland accepts that we have responsibility and Scotland will take care of it, but to use that as an argument to re-arm is, frankly, ridiculous.
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?
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?
Andrew Bridgen
The hon. Gentleman makes the case for Britain’s unilateral nuclear disarmament, a case we have heard many times in this Chamber over the years. How does he address the inescapable fact that the only nation that has ever had nuclear weapons used against it, namely Japan, did not have any?
Brendan O'Hara
I am not entirely sure what the hon. Gentleman is driving at. To be perfectly honest, it was not exactly worth waiting for. It makes no military sense at all. I return to the view that Trident is not a military weapon; it is purely a political weapon.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is clearly satisfied that the Russian state is no longer a threat to western security and the security of the UK. Perhaps he could give us his reasons for thinking that. Why is he so confident that Russia is no longer a threat to the security of the UK?
Brendan O'Hara
The hon. Lady is advocating that every country in the world—Germany, Poland, Norway and Sweden—should arm itself to the teeth. Is she honestly arguing for that? Does she believe that Russia is going to come sweeping across the plains and invade the United Kingdom? Is that what she is honestly advocating? If she wants to argue that every country in the world should possess its own nuclear weapons, I advise her to take that to the Labour party. From the sound of it, she may well get some support.
As I mentioned at the start of my speech, there was a genuine, though forlorn, hope that, with the election of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) as leader of the Labour party, there would at least be a debate on Trident in this place. I fear that the right hon. Gentleman has not managed to take his party with him. The paltry attendance of Labour Members today suggests exactly that.
The Labour party’s refusal to debate Trident will disappoint many in their own rank and file. I have no doubt that when the Prime Minister promises a vote on the maingate decision, as he did yesterday, I will see the right hon. Member for Islington North voting with the Scottish National party against Trident renewal. I fear he will have to swim through a tide of his own MPs going through the Lobby with the Conservative party again to support Trident renewal at a cost of £167,000 million. Labour loves to talk about being a multilateral party, but it cannot hide behind the fig leaf of multilateralism while committing the United Kingdom to this massive increase in nuclear weaponry. If the Labour party decides to support the Government in renewing the Trident missile programme, it will be as morally bankrupt as the Conservative party.
If Trident was ever an answer, it was an answer to a 20th-century problem, not to the problems we face in the 21st century. Trident is a purely political not a military weapon. It does not make us any more safe than nations that do not possess weapons of mass destruction. Trident is all about the UK projecting power. It is a desperate attempt to cling to the remnants of a fading imperial past, and is being paid for on the backs of the poor. Trident is diminishing the rest of the UK’s capability, and therefore there is no moral, economic or military case for renewing it.
Toby Perkins
The review is being led by the shadow Secretary of State for Defence. I shall not go into the arcane details of Labour party processes, but a member of the national executive committee is involved in supporting that process. That is the role that Ken Livingstone will play.
As I said a moment ago, this is not the first time that SNP Members have brought this question to the House, but they will know that their own approach to defence has failed to stand up to close scrutiny. Their White Paper that preceded their failed referendum campaign was clearly uncosted and provided no breakdown of costs for equipment, personnel or budgets.
Toby Perkins
I will not give way again; I am going to complete my speech—[Interruption.] We listened to the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute for quite some time, and I still do not know what he really thinks. The SNP’s White Paper failed to confront the contradictions between the party’s desire to join NATO and its desire to remove all nuclear weapons from Scottish soil. It was clear from the hon. Gentleman’s contribution that the SNP had no understanding of what would be involved when it said that it wanted to sign up to NATO. It thought that it could be a part of the alliance while being somehow removed from NATO policies. It cannot have its cake and eat it.
Brendan O’Hara
Does the hon. Gentleman believe that there is no such thing as a non-nuclear member of NATO? Does he not understand that the past two Secretaries-General of NATO have come from non-nuclear countries—namely, Denmark and Norway?
Toby Perkins
This is not a question of what my opinion is; it is a matter of simple fact that NATO is a nuclear alliance. Membership of NATO, which the SNP supports, requires allies to be members of the NATO nuclear alliance and to sit on the appropriate committees. So the fact is: an independent Scotland that was part of NATO would be covered by the nuclear umbrella. To be frank, I suspect that it is precisely because it would be covered in that way, with all the strength and security that that would offer, that it wants to be a member of NATO. That would give assurance to its own members. This is not a question of my opinion; it is a simple statement of fact.
Mark Menzies
No, I will not give way.
That is what we are talking about. It is misleading at best to the people of Dunbartonshire to say that that number of jobs, jobs of that quality, and those skills will be there without a nuclear deterrent.
Brendan O'Hara
Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the people of Argyll and Bute, and the people of Dumbarton are so unaware of the circumstances in which they live that at the general election they could not work that out for themselves? Had they not believed what we were saying, I would not have been elected and my hon. Friends who represent Dumbarton would not have been elected.
Mark Menzies
Absolutely. Elections are always referendums on the future. I spent the day with the hon. Gentleman on Thursday looking at the aircraft carriers. If we took HM Clyde out of the equation, along with Coulport, Faslane and the skills that those high-paid jobs bring, his constituency would be a far poorer place.
Mr Dunne
I am about to respond to some of the comments that have been made today. Before I answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I want to deal with the fantasy figures presented by the SNP’s defence spokesman, the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), who had conjured up from nowhere the idea that if the nuclear deterrent ceased to exist, Scotland would benefit by some £15 billion as a result of not spending money on it. The cost of replacing the Vanguard class with the Successor class is, as identified clearly in yesterday’s document, £31 billion spread over decades—over some 30 years—so the idea of a much larger figure is not correct.
Mr Dunne
No, I am afraid I will not give way.
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s apparent admission that in the event that the deterrent was to be decommissioned, Scotland would take its share of the nuclear decommissioning risk and location of nuclear material. That is very welcome indeed and is in stark contrast to the responses we have had from the Scottish Government to the disposal project currently in consultation.
The hon. Gentleman also indicated no willingness to acknowledge there is any potential threat from nuclear-empowered nations. He was challenged and signally failed to provide an answer as to what the potential threat might be from Russia, despite the fact that every time there is an incursion into either air or sea space approximate to our national territorial waters SNP Members are the first to jump up and ask what we are doing about it. It seems that they have, as so often, double standards. Finally, I point out to the hon. Gentleman that there has been no increase in nuclear weaponry in this country—far from it; nuclear weapons numbers have declined.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield gave a thoughtful speech from a somewhat confused party position. On the governance of implementing a delivery organisation to make sure we deliver the Successor programme on time and to budget over the years to come, I can confirm that this will remain subject to oversight by the MOD. We are in the process of working out how we best learn the lessons of delivering major procurement projects like Aircraft Carrier Alliance to get the industry properly aligned, and the Ministry and the delivery organisations currently within DE&S properly aligned, to work in partnership to deliver this vital programme.