Trident Renewal

Joan Ruddock Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

May I apologise at the outset, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the fact that I have a long-standing constituency engagement and I will not be here for the wind-ups? However, I am confident that both Front Benchers will say only good things about me.

There is a well-known saying in the peace movement that a unilateralist is a multilateralist who means it, and I am one of those. Whatever I have to say today about nuclear weapons goes for all nuclear weapons, and when the British Government, of whatever persuasion, say they want to rid the world of nuclear weapons and when they signed the non-proliferation treaty committing themselves to do just that, I also expect that they mean it. As one of only nine nuclear-armed states, the UK cannot escape its duty to progress disarmament talks. So why would we seek to upgrade Trident for another 50 years without exploring what might be done to bring forward multilateral nuclear disarmament? Why do we not ask ourselves whether spending up to £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction is actually the best way to defend the people of this country, when we cannot raise millions out of poverty or fund our precious national health service? Why do we not ask? It is because too many politicians in this country—we just heard such a speech—remain locked in cold war thinking when much of the world has moved on.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady says that most of the world has moved on. Has she had any intimation from President Putin that the Russians have any intention of engaging in discussions with her about nuclear disarmament? Has she heard from the North Koreans that they intend to abandon their nuclear capability? How does she respond to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s comment that we have reduced our capability and it has made not one jot of difference to those other nations with nuclear weapons?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman is citing countries that are of course the minority—the nuclear-armed states. They all have the same attitude as him: they all have cold war thinking. Many of them have reduced their nuclear arsenals, but they remain more dangerous today.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I will try to deal with this in the same theoretical terms as the right hon. Lady is trying to do. If her argument is that we have moved on from the cold war—it must be noted that at the height of the cold war she, as the head of CND, wanted us unilaterally to disarm—the point is that there can be no guarantee that we will not move back into a cold war or face some other threat. We cannot know what threats will arise over the next 30 to 50 years, which is why we need an array of deterrent weapons.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman says we cannot know what will happen in the future, but we have a pretty good idea. The threats that were part of the cold war scenario are very different from those we face today.

[Dr Lewis]

Tomorrow?

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[Dame Joan Ruddock]

As I go on in my speech, I hope to indicate that I am talking about today and tomorrow.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

The right hon. Lady is making an important speech about the way we think about these issues. Does she agree that the threats emerging in the world at a geopolitical level relate to terrorism? Does she agree that a nuclear bomb is no use at all against terrorists?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I agree with the hon. Lady, but, interestingly, the Government do not, and I will address that point, too.

So what do the true believers say Trident renewal is for? Three threat scenarios are usually advanced: the re-emergence of a major nuclear threat, which is code for Russia; new states acquiring nuclear capability, which is code for Iran; and state-sponsored nuclear terrorism. Russia is behaving badly, it is modernising its nuclear arsenals and it is threatening Ukraine, but why would Russia specifically target Britain for a nuclear attack? We have to ask the same question of Iran, surrounded as it is by nuclear-armed Pakistan on one side and nuclear-armed Israel on the other: what would be the motivation for an attack on the UK? Is it not clear that, however unpalatable, painstaking diplomatic negotiation with this regime aimed at preventing its acquisition of nuclear weapons is more likely to succeed than military threats?

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

On the Ukraine example, the nuclear deterrent is going to ensure, as it has done for many years, that any war—God forbid we have one—is conventional, not nuclear. Ukraine could turn nasty, as Mr Gorbachev was warning only the other day, so we need the ultimate deterrent to fight a war—if we ever need to—at a conventional level, not a nuclear one.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

All the hon. Gentleman is advocating, of course, is conventional war, which can kill hundreds of thousands of people, as we see in Iraq. He is not making an argument. We need to look at where the real threats are and where real security lies. I will argue that real security lies in nuclear disarmament.

It is on the third scenario, state-sponsored nuclear terrorism, where nuclear deterrence is least credible. The UK has promised—this is official policy—a proportionate response to a state that sponsored a nuclear attack, and a mechanism is in place to trace the perpetrators. The nuclear material will be sent to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston for analysis before a retaliatory attack is ordered. Can anyone imagine what might happen in those hours or days when analysis was under way? When that is concluded, would the Secretary of State, in the cold light of day, give the order to fire even a single Trident missile? Of course, if he did so, he would immediately be charged with a crime against humanity, but he does not even have that power. He conveniently forgets, as he did throughout his speech today, that Trident is not independent and is assigned to NATO; it is the United States that would call the shots. So why is it, when 47 out of 50 sovereign European states feel more secure without nuclear weapons than with them, that this country remains so blinkered?

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend also recognise that those other members of NATO are part of the nuclear umbrella of NATO and agree to NATO nuclear policy?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

My hon. Friend needs to go back and look at his geography. There are not 47 sovereign states in Europe which belong to NATO—

[Mr Jones]

NATO ones do.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The NATO ones do, but if my hon. Friend listened, he would know that I referred to 47 sovereign states, and they are not all members of NATO by any means.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she appreciate that almost all my constituents and millions of Labour supporters up and down the country cannot understand why, when we are seeing massive cuts in our public sector and welfare state, we are going to spend upwards of £20 billion on a weapons system that will not make us safe and is not genuinely independent?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Lady mentioned that 47 Governments of the 50 in Europe do not have nuclear weapons. On the UK Government’s logic, their description of countries not taking their defence and security “seriously” would apply to those countries. Does she think that is an appalling position for the UK Government to hold about our allies and friends in Europe?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Nuclear weapons have no utility. They cannot be used to advance any cause or secure any territory without the most devastating effects. The true believers present them as benign, silently gliding under the oceans or quietly snoozing in bunkers doing no harm, but it is not so. Some 18 months ago, a book called “Command and Control” was published detailing more than 1,000 nuclear accidents in the United States. Its author, Eric Schlosser, spent six years researching and submitting freedom of information requests. The results are terrifying and would be unbelievable if they had not come directly from official military sources. Historic accidents range from the proverbial spanner being dropped, causing a fuel leak, leading to a missile explosion, and a warhead being blown off, to a nut being left off a bomber, resulting in the engine catching fire and the fire only failing to reach the bomb bay due to the prevailing wind. Today, there is far more dependence on computer technology than on the mechanical, but there is no consolation in that. In 2008, an engineer went to a Minuteman silo, realised that there had been a fire and that the fire alarm had failed. Luckily, the fire burned itself out before it got to the missile. In 2010 at the same base, online contact was lost for an hour with 50 Minuteman missiles—a computer chip had come loose, but it could have been a cyber-attack.

Even more terrifying is the true story of Stanislav Petrov, now portrayed in a film called “The Man Who Saved The World.” Petrov was a colonel in charge of a Soviet nuclear early warning centre when an alarm went off signifying that five American nuclear missiles were heading towards the USSR. Petrov took it on himself to refuse to follow protocol and did not send the signal for a retaliatory strike. He believed that the alarm had to be a malfunction, and he was right, but just suppose somebody else had been on duty. Had a nuclear exchange occurred at that time, we know that the world’s eco-system would have been destroyed. Today we are told that nuclear arsenals are smaller, which is true, and that the world is a safer place, which is not true.

In 2007-08, several groups of scientists published new and peer-reviewed research on the effects of a regional exchange of nuclear weapons, such as might occur between India and Pakistan. The firepower used for modelling purposes was 50 Hiroshima-sized bombs on each side, which represents just 0.03% of the explosive power of the current global arsenal.

We have known since 1945 of the immediate effects of nuclear weapons—blast, firestorms and radioactivity that would kill millions, but only those who are near the targets. This is what the scientists say of the indirect effects: about five megatons of black smoke would be produced and, as the smoke lifts into the stratosphere, it would be transported around the world. The climatic effects of this high layer of smoke would be unprecedented, plunging the planet into temperatures colder than the little ice age that began in the 17th century. Worldwide agriculture would be severely affected. A larger nuclear exchange, including that involving UK weapons, would result in a true nuclear winter, making agriculture impossible. Both scenarios show climate effects lasting more than a decade and up to 2 billion people dying of starvation.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady speaks with great passion and great authority on these matters. The question is whether she thinks that the awful scenario that she describes would be more or less likely if we did away with nuclear deterrents.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I will come on to suggest what the world community thinks about that. It is of course my opinion that we would be safer without nuclear weapons. If the hon. Gentleman were both to read the research on nuclear winters and the report of the accidents that have been recently published, he would realise that there is no safety in the possession of nuclear weapons, even if they are not used in anger.

It is instructive to look at how we view the world. We need to reflect on the deaths of those 17 people in Paris at the hands of terrorists. We were rightly outraged and right to mourn them, so how can it be that we are willing to contemplate the deaths of millions? Why do we have such moral certitude over the banning of chemical and biological weapons, land mines and cluster bombs but not nuclear weapons? It is also instructive to inquire how other countries and institutions view the nuclear weapon states such as Britain.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

As always, the right hon. Lady is enormously courteous in giving way. It was discovered after the event that the Russians had been massively cheating on the 1972 biological weapons treaty. Therefore, it is the assurance of the underlying deterrent against other weapons of mass destruction that we have to worry about and be concerned with.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman does not make a coherent case. Chemical weapons have certainly been used in recent times—we do not know whether biological weapons have been used—which means that nuclear weapons did not act as a deterrent, so his argument is not sound.

[Mr Jenkin]

The right hon. Lady makes a necessary contribution to this debate and she asks a very interesting question about the banning of other unacceptable weapons systems while we continue to possess nuclear weapons. But is it not the case that nuclear weapons represent, in the psychology of our global civilisation, an unacceptable threshold of use? Therefore, they have a deterrent effect because the release of one weapon could release many. I ask her this question: why, since the end of the second world war when nuclear weapons were first deployed, did war between the great powers end? Why was that the last world war? Could the possession of nuclear weapons have something to do with it?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman does not know his history. There have been hundreds of wars since that time and hundreds of thousands of people have died. Many of the wars were proxy wars between the superpowers, so his argument is completely invalid. If he argues that deterrence is so wonderful because the weapons are never used, then he has to ask: why have them at all? Let us get rid of them rather than posture and spend vast fortunes and create a situation in which, at the very least, accidents and misjudgments could happen. The point about luck is that eventually it runs out, and that could happen.

It is instructive to inquire how other countries and institutions view the nuclear weapon states. I had an opportunity to find that out last December when I attended a conference organised by the Austrian Government on the humanitarian effects of the use of nuclear weapons, to which the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) has already referred. Building on two previous meetings hosted by Norway and Mexico, this conference was attended by representatives of no fewer than 157 Governments. Most telling were the contributions of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, the bodies on which the whole world depends, regardless of politics, in cases of natural disaster. Let me quote from their statement:

“Even though only a few states currently possess nuclear weapons, they are a concern to all states…They can only bring us to a catastrophic and irreversible scenario that no one wishes and to which no one can respond in any meaningful way.”

Their statement continues:

“All other weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical and biological weapons, have been banned. Nuclear weapons—which have far worse consequences than those weapons—must now be specifically prohibited and eliminated as a matter of urgency.”

I do not think that there is anyone who could not respect a statement from the Red Cross and the Red Crescent.

[John Woodcock]

rose—

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am just about to finish.

After the conference, the Austrian Government issued a pledge in which they promised

“to identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition…of nuclear weapons”.

About 40 countries have already signified their support for progressing towards an international treaty that could ban all nuclear weapons.

The renewal of Trident flies in the face of such international action and it must not be allowed to do so. The real threats to this country are cyber-warfare, terrorism, climate change and pandemics. We need all the resources we can muster to confront these threats and we cannot afford to squander billions of pounds on a weapons system that by general consent can never be used.

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[Sir Nick Harvey]

I remind the hon. Lady that the national security strategy identified such a nuclear attack as a second level threat. I believe that we have potential nuclear adversaries, but I do not believe that we have actual nuclear adversaries at the moment. To be an actual adversary requires a combination of capability and intent. I can see plenty of countries with the capability but none with the intent, and countries that may have an intent to launch a nuclear weapon at us in future are still a considerable way away from having such a capability. If any of that should change, and if any future Government should arrive at a different calculation and believe there was an enemy with both capability and intent, they would need to revisit our posture.

Trident should be retained on a flexible basis that can be ramped up or down according to our reading of the security situation, which is exactly how we approach all our other military capability. The rest of our military capability is not kept on constant patrol on the basis that that is the only point at which it has any deterrent effect; it is kept at different levels of readiness, according to our assessment of the particular threat that it is designed to mitigate.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the one scenario in which there could be an instant attack, without the build-up and norms of international discussions or whatever, would be a terrorist nuclear attack, not state sponsored but by something like ISIS? In those circumstances, does he agree that our nuclear weapons system is completely useless and does not deter?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

The right hon. Lady makes a good point. If a threat emerges from nowhere, it will be either at the hands of terrorists or a by rogue state sponsored by terrorists, against which a conventional state-on-state nuclear deterrent of the sort that we have would have absolutely no value or purpose. It is important to remember that we have moral and legal obligations to try to bring about global nuclear disarmament, and with one notable exception I hope that all Members of the House believe that that is a desirable objective.

In 1968 the non-proliferation treaty was in effect a pact between the nuclear states that were going to use their best endeavours to negotiate away their weapons and the rest of the world that agreed not to develop nuclear programmes. In terms of non-proliferation the treaty has been moderately successful, but it has made astonishingly little progress on disarmament. Very few signatories to that treaty can have imagined that by 2015 so little progress would have been made. Things are stirring and changing, and the British Government need to wake up to that. More than 150 nation states have attended international conferences and considered in detail and depth the humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons.