Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the way in which he is introducing the debate. The question about other countries possessing nuclear weapons takes me back to the old arguments where we used to ask people to name a single country that would either acquire nuclear weapons because we had got them, or get rid of them if we decided unilaterally to get rid of ours. Do you know what? They never came up with the name of one country.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Gavin Williamson]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is going to mention such a country, but I give way to him.

[Mr Cunningham]

I am certainly not going to mention such a country. I was going to ask the Secretary of State about the welfare of the ex-submariners and how they are looked after. Specifically, is it covered by the covenant, which a Labour Government introduced?

[Gavin Williamson]

I think we on the Government side of the House can be duly proud of the work that has been done since 2010 on ensuring that veterans of all three services are properly looked after; submariners are equally covered by that.

It is important to understand the remarkable engineering that goes into these remarkably sophisticated submarines, whose level of sophistication matches that of a spacecraft. It is only fitting that this debate marks the start of a series of events designed to commemorate such dedicated and continuous service not only from the submariners, but from the industry and the communities that have supported the deterrent.