UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Time is short and I have little time for a preamble, but these weapons are a useless relic from another time. They are morally obscene, completely useless and utterly unaffordable at a time when the gap between the haves and the have-nots is wider than it has ever been, with the Government hellbent on destroying the welfare system and with thousands relying on food banks. Nothing will convince me that we should have any priority other than changing that horrific experience.

I do not want to live in a country where an already struggling family are told that their house is too big or that the room that gives them space for a wheelchair or support equipment is a luxury. I do not want to live in a country where we have nothing to offer our children but excuses and craftily worded answers when they see huge companies telling us they have paid their way, when in fact they have hidden accounts all over the world. I do not want this country to accept that families should need to go to a food bank to eat something in the evening when their kids come home from school. No one can say that is fair. No one can say that is acceptable.

In this Parliament—right here, right now—we have a choice: we can stand up and say, “No more. Not in our name.” No more will we stand by while the Government and their supporters, and often even the Opposition, walk the other way and plan to spend our money on something abhorrent, obscene and completely unnecessary in our modern world.

What could we do with £200 billion? That money could bring change. Tonight, the families I mentioned deserve change. They deserve better. They deserve a fairer future. They deserve to eat tonight, to be comforted, to be safe and to feel that they are part of our society and that we care about them. They have the right to opportunity and to an education, as far as they want to take it. They have the right to expect that this country, with all its wealth, status and opportunity, can move beyond insane projections of power and can care for its own to change things for the better.

Our lives, and everything we do, are about change. They are about the future we want, not the future that others are accepting for us. We should start testing ourselves. That should not be about how we build technology that is capable of destruction and death at an indiscriminate and barbaric level. It should be about how we provide for those who have little or nothing—or, to put it another way, it is about bairns, not bombs.