US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 6th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed; those countries have all been involved in conflicts, and we have come near to the use of nuclear weapons in the case of Korea and in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Clearly, their existence poses a threat. When the House debated Trident renewal in 2007, many Members took the view that Britain’s security depended on having nuclear weapons. If that was the case, someone could argue for any country in the world developing nuclear weapons on the basis that that would guarantee its security.

As I have explained, the reality is that the vast majority of nations do not have nuclear weapons and do not want them. Although some are under a nuclear alliance such as NATO, many are not and do not possess nuclear weapons, yet have massive natural resources. Many countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia are part of nuclear weapons-free zones. That is my view.

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

I appreciate that I will have the opportunity to speak after the hon. Gentleman, but I want to take him back to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said that if nuclear weapons were used, there would be dire effects on the environment and on the planet, but does he not recognise that people who believe in deterrents believe that the nuclear deterrent is constantly in use, because the use resides in the possession, which results in the deterrent effect on any other power against using such weapons against this country?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Gentleman and I have debated that view, and I simply do not agree that they provide security. Yes, they are in existence every day and therefore clearly are potentially a threat to somebody, but it did not do the USA much good on 11 September 2001. Nuclear weapons were not much help on that occasion; nor are they much help in dealing with poverty, environmental disasters and people who are forced to flee and seek refuge elsewhere.

My purpose today is to debate the mutual defence agreement and that, of course, is central to Britain’s nuclear relationship with the United States. I turn to the history of the agreement. The USA had the McMahon Act, which did not allow the sharing of its nuclear or defence information with any other state, notwithstanding the provisions of the NATO treaty of 1948. Britain, which had a very close relationship with the USA throughout the 1940s and ’50s, could not legally share a relationship of nuclear information with the USA. The McMahon Act was then amended, and straight after the amendment was agreed, the mutual defence agreement came into being, by which information and technology is shared between Britain and the USA.

An interesting legal point relates to the use of testing facilities at the Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston and plutonium, which it would be completely illegal to use or test in the USA. I would be grateful if the Minister said whether there is any testing involving plutonium or potential uses of plutonium at AWE Aldermaston, because it is a significant part of the issue.

The mutual defence agreement has been amended a number of times in its history and was most recently renewed, on a regular 10-year cycle, to allow arrangements for the transfer of special nuclear materials and non-nuclear components. The treaty was last extended in 2004 and will be extended a further 10 years from this year. As I have explained, the US Congress debated it earlier; we were not able to debate it.

The next issue relates to what I have just said about the use of AWE Aldermaston, but also to the legality of nuclear weapons and the relationship of the agreement to the non-proliferation treaty, which is the result of an initiative by a previous Labour Government to try to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The treaty has two central themes. One is that all states that do not possess nuclear weapons and that sign the non-proliferation treaty agree not to possess them, take them on board or develop them. The other is that the five declared nuclear weapon states—Britain, France, China, Russia and the USA—agree both to take steps towards disarmament and not to allow the proliferation of nuclear weapons. So it would be interesting to know how Israel managed to get hold of its nuclear weapons and nuclear facilities.

It would also be interesting to know how this Government or any other Government can justify nuclear rearmament within the terms of the articles of the non-proliferation treaty. In a legal opinion released in July 2004 for Peacerights, BASIC—the British American Security Information Council—and the Acronym Institute, Rabinder Singh, QC, and Professor Christine Chinkin of Matrix Chambers concluded that

“it is strongly arguable that the renewal of the Mutual Defence Agreement is in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”.

I would therefore be grateful if the Minister said in his reply to the debate what the legal process is in the evaluation of the mutual defence agreement and how he believes that it is compatible with our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is coming up for its five-year review in May 2015—unhelpfully, during the general election period in this country. Will he explain exactly what power and what finance have been used, in advance of the Trident replacement programme, to ensure that the British Government have that money available, even though there has been no main-gate decision, which is due to be taken in 2016?

I shall quote from written evidence given to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs by Nick Ritchie of the Bradford disarmament research centre:

“The UK is entirely dependent upon the United States for supply and refurbishment of its Trident II (D5) submarine-launched ballistic missiles… The missiles themselves are produced and serviced in the United States by Lockheed Martin. The UK does not actually own any individual missiles, but purchased the rights to 58 missiles from a common pool held at the US Strategic Weapons facility at the Kings Bay Submarine Base, Georgia. British Trident submarines also conduct their missile test firings at the US Eastern Test Range, off the coast of Florida.”

The obvious point is that the claim that Britain has an independent nuclear deterrent must be treated with the utmost caution, if not derision, when what is quite clear is where the technology comes from, the relationship with the mutual defence agreement, the expenditure involved and the testing facilities that are available for Britain to use in the USA.

[Dr Lewis]

There is a question of independence in terms not of manufacture, but of control. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is entirely a matter for the United Kingdom Government whether the deterrent would be fired—as opposed to used—in response to a nuclear attack on this country and that the United States could do nothing to prevent that from happening?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is indeed a very good question. I hope that the Minister can assist the hon. Gentleman with the answer, because it is fundamental. We have been told all my life that we have an independent nuclear deterrent in Britain and that we can operate independently. The mutual defence agreement should not have been necessary in 1958 if that was the case. It clearly was the case before 1958. Whether it was after that, I doubt, and it certainly was not the case at all after Polaris came in during the 1960s. That was a US import, as is the current technology. Could Britain fire off a nuclear weapon independently of the United States? No, I do not believe that it could. I believe that it would require the active participation of the US military and US Administration to undertake that. I simply do not believe that it is an independent nuclear weapon. I hope that this debate begins to raise more of those extremely important questions.

I was referring a few moments ago to the activities at AWE Aldermaston. Stanley Orman, a former deputy director of the AWE, said in 2008 that

“we also devised a technique...of imploding a non-fissile plutonium isotope. Now because it was plutonium the laws in the States would not allow you to implode this even though it was non-fissile, because it was plutonium. So again the American scientists would come across and use our laboratories because they couldn’t use theirs.”

If that is the case, one has to ask this question. Why is this treaty so one-sided that the USA is unable to do some testing in its own jurisdiction and therefore does it in ours, when the mutual defence agreement has received very limited parliamentary scrutiny, apart from today?

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and a pleasure, as always, to follow the eloquent case made by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I am always happy to support him when he applies for debates such as this, just as he is always happy to support me when I apply for debates about nuclear deterrence. The reason why we are happy to support each other, despite taking entirely opposite views, is that we both feel that we have a good case to make.

There is no earthly reason why Parliament should be shy of debating such an important matter. The hon. Gentleman may find it a trifle more disappointing than I do that if we took a trip down memory lane to a similar debate in the 1980s, the Chamber would be full of people wishing to contribute. He and I have, to put it mildly, struggled a little to get people to come along and take part in this debate, for the simple reason that the issue is not nearly as contentious now as it was two or three decades ago.

I venture to suggest that that is because the British public have spoken on the matter, over and over again. They spoke decisively on it in the general elections of 1983 and 1987, when the question of Britain one-sidedly abandoning its nuclear deterrent was central to campaigning. They have spoken time and again in public opinion polls. Of course, it is possible to vary the answers that we receive in such polls according to the questions we ask. However, when we ask what I regard as the fundamental question: “Do you think that Britain should continue to possess a nuclear deterrent or nuclear weapons while other countries have them?”, invariably, about two thirds of the respondents say yes, about a quarter say no and a small, single-figure fraction are undecided. The issue is divisive, because fundamentally it is an article of faith. Are we more likely to keep the peace by getting rid of such weapons unconditionally or by showing a potential enemy that it would be too dangerous to attack us with their nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction?

[Mr Leech]

What does the hon. Gentleman think the answer would be if we asked the general public whether they would prefer to dump Trident rather than sack soldiers?

[Dr Lewis]

I think it would depend on the extent of the debate that had taken place before the question was asked. I would be confident that if there were to be a debate on the subject, the public would come to share my view that no amount of conventional forces can be adequate to prevent an attack on us by an enemy armed with weapons of mass destruction if we lack the means to retaliate in similar terms.

While I am dealing with the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, let me return to a point that he made earlier in an intervention on the hon. Member for Islington North. He pointed out that nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence had not abolished war, and that wars continued all over the planet. That is not an argument against nuclear deterrence; it is an argument in favour of it. After the second world war, if we had lived through 50 years of hostility between the then Soviet bloc and the west and there had been no conflicts anywhere in the world in which the nuclear balance of terror did not apply, one could indeed make the case that the nuclear balance of terror had had nothing to do with the prevention of war. The reality was that proxy wars were being fought by client states of the superpowers during the cold war, but the one thing that the superpowers never dared to do was to fight against one another directly, because they knew the potential outcome of all-out war between nuclear-armed powers.

Why is it important to have a debate on the matter, even though public opinion is fairly settled and parliamentary opinion is fairly relaxed? There are two reasons.

[Mr Spellar]

The hon. Gentleman says that parliamentary opinion is fairly relaxed, and that may be a proper assessment of the arithmetic. In that case, why does his Prime Minister not put the issue of Trident renewal to a vote of Parliament?

[Dr Lewis]

I wish I knew the answer. I have asked that question many times, and it takes me neatly on to the two reasons why it is important that we have a debate on this subject, even though Parliament seems relatively relaxed about it. There is no doubt that if we look at the arithmetic of the 2007 vote that took us through the first stages of the successor programme to the Vanguard class submarines, it was exactly as the shadow Minister says—virtually every Conservative MP and a substantial majority of Labour MPs voted for continuing the deterrent into the next generation, and a significant minority of Labour unilateralists voted against the measure. The figure was about 80 or 90, if I remember correctly.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

One hundred.

[Dr Lewis]

One hundred exactly. Any advances on 100? No, so let us take that as the figure.

There is no doubt that, if there were to be a free vote in the House of Commons, this matter would proceed. One of the reasons why I want to continue having these debates until such a vote happens is that there should already have been a vote. The shadow Minister is right about that. The main-gate contracts were due to be signed during this Parliament, and it was entirely a result of coalition politics and a back-door deal with the Liberal Democrats, who are opposed to renewing Trident, that the vote was not held and that the life of the existing submarines was extended by five years. The key vote has now been put off until 2016.

One of the two main reasons why it is valuable to continue having these debates is that it is important that Front Benchers from both main parties put their respective positions on the record as often as possible. Let us face it, much as Labour and Conservative Members might regret it, there is always the possibility that we may end up with another hung Parliament that is once again dependent on the Liberal Democrats, or conceivably on the UK Independence party or, worst of all, the Scottish National party—I say that without reference to the fact that the party’s parliamentary leader, the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), has just vacated his place—if Labour suffers as badly in Scotland at the general election as some predict. It is therefore terribly important that the Front Benchers of both main parties have their feet held to the fire as often as possible so that there can be less room for wriggling out of it in the event of another hung Parliament.

[Mr Spellar]

The hon. Gentleman refers to wriggling out, but that is exactly what he is doing. It was absolutely clear where the parties stood in the debate on 17 July 2013, when the policies were enunciated perfectly clearly. My party’s policies were endorsed by the national policy forum and the recent Labour party conference. I am not aware of any changes in his party’s view. This debate is therefore not about the position of the parties being enunciated or holding people’s feet to the fire. The fact is that he has not managed to persuade his Prime Minister to do anything, and he ought to come clean about that.

[Dr Lewis]

There is a very good reason why I have not been able to persuade the Prime Minister to do anything, which is that it was evidently part of the negotiations—albeit that they were not made public at the time—on the formation of the coalition Government.

[Mr Spellar]

Secret negotiations.

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed. Evidently as part of the deal an agreement was reached between the Conservative leader and the Liberal Democrat leader that the decisive steps for the renewal of the successor submarines for Trident would be put off until after the next general election.

[Mr Spellar]

rose—

[Dr Lewis]

I will give way one more time, but I want to make some progress.

[Mr Spellar]

I wholly understand the hon. Gentleman’s desire to make progress. Let us be clear that what he has said is that, for a squalid deal to get office, the Prime Minister was prepared to damage the defence of this country. That is according to the hon. Gentleman’s own arguments.

[Dr Lewis]

What I am saying is quite clear. If we end up with a hung Parliament and the balance of power is held by a small unilateralist party, it will be able to blackmail one or other of the main parties into not doing what should be done, which is to sign the contracts to make the renewal of Trident for another generation a certainty. I am clear that that was part of the potpourri of things that were negotiated in private. At the time I described it as a love gift to the Liberal Democrats. I thought it was absolutely wrong. It was a shock and a surprise, and it is not something of which any Conservative should be proud. Having said that, I look to my own party’s Front Benchers for an assurance that nothing like that will ever happen again, and I look to the Opposition spokesman for an assurance that no Labour leader will be tempted to conclude such a deal either.

The second reason why it is important to have a debate on this subject at this time is that the terms of trade, as it were, in international relations have changed. When the hon. Member for Islington North and I addressed these matters in January 2013, when we debated the nuclear deterrent, and in June 2013, when we debated the non-proliferation treaty, much of the argument was focused on the fact that the cold war was over and showed no sign of returning and that the nuclear deterrent was therefore irrelevant to the threats that then confronted us. As some of us stated at the time, it was far from certain that we could ever know significantly in advance whether those circumstances were going to change. We all hoped that Russia, having shed communism and started along a more democratic path, would continue to go in that direction, but there could be no guarantee.

Even now, we cannot tell where our relationship with Russia will be in the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Nobody predicted the crisis that has arisen over Ukraine, and some might argue that if Ukraine were a member of NATO, the Russians would not have done what they have done. Conversely, it could also be argued that if Ukraine were a member of NATO and the Russians had done what they have done, we would possibly now be on the brink of an extremely dangerous east-west confrontation.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that there was an agreement between Russia and the west at the time of Ukrainian independence that Ukraine would not join NATO and would not be a nuclear power? Indeed, at the time Ukraine itself renounced nuclear weapons and their presence in Ukraine.

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed, Ukraine did renounce nuclear weapons. I strongly suspect that public opinion in Ukraine might now be divided, to put it mildly, over the wisdom of that decision. Given that they were Soviet nuclear weapons, Ukraine probably had little choice in the matter.

It would be a mistake to put countries on the path to NATO membership—I have said this consistently—if other NATO members would not be prepared to go to war in defence of their borders. It is all well and good to say that everyone would like to be a member of every alliance, but NATO has been so successful for so long because there is no doubt about its security guarantee. That is the importance of deterrence. In order to deter, we must be able not only to threaten an aggressor with an unacceptable level of punishment but to ensure that he is in no doubt that that unacceptable punishment will inevitably follow if he commits himself to an attack using weapons of mass destruction.

It was said earlier in the debate that the fact that the nuclear deterrent did not prevent the attacks on America in 2001 disproves the efficacy of nuclear deterrence. It does nothing of the kind. The efficacy of nuclear deterrence lies in its ability to deter another country with weapons of mass destruction from firing them in an act of aggression against you—not you personally, Sir Roger, but the person trying to deter the potential aggressor from attacking. The fact that the ability to deter one form of attack does not act as a panacea to prevent all forms of aggression or attack is neither here nor there.

The question we must ask ourselves is what the situation would have been if a country that did not possess nuclear weapons but had overwhelming conventional power faced a country that was weaker conventionally but could nevertheless deploy even a small number of nuclear weapons in an act of aggression. The answer is that no amount of conventional forces could make up for it.

When I saw that the hon. Member for Islington North wanted this debate, I knew that although it would hinge on the mutual defence agreement, that would be only a peg on which to hang the wider argument. The truth of the matter is that the mutual defence agreement is merely a facilitator for the UK’s continuing ability to maintain a nuclear deterrent.

When somebody is against maintaining the nuclear deterrent, there are a number of ways for them to campaign against it. They can try to win votes in Parliament, but as we have seen, when votes are held in Parliament on the issue, the majority of MPs are in favour of continuing the deterrent. They can try to win the battle for public opinion, but as we have seen in general elections during the cold war and in subsequent opinion polls, most members of the public think that the country should continue to possess some nuclear weapons as long as other countries have them. Therefore, the advocates of unilateral British nuclear disarmament must try to find indirect means of pursuing it. They think that if they can cite the non-proliferation treaty or the mutual defence agreement and derail the latter or get a legal opinion about the former, they might achieve by indirect means what they cannot achieve directly.

The truth of the matter is that nuclear weapons indeed have terrible humanitarian consequences, but those consequences arise when such weapons are fired; they do not arise when the weapons are used as they are meant to be used by democratic states. As I said in my first intervention on the hon. Member for Islington North, they are used in order to show any country that might contemplate or toy with the idea of aggression against the United Kingdom—a NATO democratic country—that that cannot be undertaken without the certainty of incurring unacceptable levels of retaliation.

Article VI of the non-proliferation treaty says:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

The only thing that is time-limited is the

“cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date”.

I am sure that the Minister will spell out how this country least of all the nuclear powers can be accused of being involved in a nuclear arms race—I am glad to see him nodding—because it has done more to reduce its nuclear stockpile than any other nuclear country.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

To take the hon. Gentleman back to what he said a couple of moments ago about the effects of nuclear weapons, surely he must be as aware as I am of the effects of nuclear testing in Australia, the Pacific, the United States and the former Soviet Union. To say that nuclear weapons’ existence has no effects is simply not correct.

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the testing of nuclear weapons—they were physically fired and exploded—had effects. That is why there have been subsequent agreements to ensure that no testing of that sort is ever done again in the atmosphere. He is absolutely right about that, but I am afraid that we have moved long beyond that point now. We are now at the point where we must decide which is the more humanitarian way to proceed. I would argue that the lesson of 50 years’ stand-off during the cold war, albeit with some intense crises at one time or another, is that the people who first thought about such matters in 1945 were correct. They viewed it slightly differently from Clement Attlee.

The hon. Gentleman—I like to call him my hon. Friend—quoted Clement Attlee at the beginning of this debate as saying that the only way to prevent catastrophe would be to outlaw war. I believe that the only way to prevent catastrophe—he has heard me quote this before, but I am afraid that will not prevent me from quoting it again—was set out in 1945 by Professor Sir Henry Tizard, the leading defence scientist of the day, when he was considering the future nature of warfare in a secret report for the chiefs of staff. He was not allowed to consider the coming of the atomic bomb in any detail, but he could not resist making a general observation about it:

“A knowledge that we were prepared, in the last resort,”

to retaliate with an atomic bomb

“might well deter an aggressive nation.”

He drew a rather revealing parallel:

“Duelling was a recognised method of settling quarrels between men of high social standing so long as the duellists stood 20 paces apart and fired at each other with pistols of a primitive type. If the rule had been that they should stand a yard apart with pistols at each other’s hearts, we doubt whether it would long have remained a recognised method of settling affairs of honour.”

[Jeremy Corbyn]

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman quotes Tizard. He could also have quoted Sir William Penney, but I suggest that he look at the profound comments of Einstein, who said that if he had known what was coming, he would rather have been a clockmaker. Joseph Rotblat, whose work was crucial to the Manhattan project, was so appalled by the power of nuclear weapons that he spent his whole life campaigning for a nuclear-free world. Surely they are more apposite than Tizard.

[Dr Lewis]

I am afraid that I have not put my argument across sufficiently well. I was not trying to suggest that we should accept the argument based on the eminence of Sir Henry Tizard; I used the argument because of its innate strength. The fact is that many distinguished philosophers have been ardent nuclear unilateralists, including some who worked on the bomb. I gave that quote not so much because of who said it, although I felt it necessary to spell that out, but because of the truth that it contains, which is that when a weapons system is not only able but certain to inflict unacceptable damage, therefore making retaliation unavoidable to those who wish to commit aggression, people will think much more deeply and carefully before they embark on attack, aggression and conflict. The experience of the cold war proves that, and the majority of people in Parliament and among the public recognise that.

There is therefore nothing to fear in debating issues such as whether or not the mutual defence agreement should continue, because what the agreement amounts to is a method of ensuring that this country can never be threatened by an undemocratic state brandishing atomic, nuclear, thermonuclear or chemical weapons. Also, if we look not at the question of who manufactures the components of the weapons system but at who has control over whether the weapons would ever be fired, we can be in no doubt, and neither can any potential aggressor, that any attempt to threaten this country with nuclear blackmail would be suicidal.

It is not a nice thing to live under a balance of terror, but it is a lot better than living under a monopoly of mass destruction weapons that are in the hands of undemocratic countries.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir Roger, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this debate, which was secured by the unlikely duo of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

My hon. Friend and I served together for many years on the London Labour party executive; it was probably around the same time that the hon. Member for New Forest East was a member of the Labour party. I have known my hon. Friend a long time and he has been consistent; it is fair to say that I have consistently disagreed with him during that time. However, he has been extremely patient in constantly ploughing his furrow, as I suppose would be true of any allotment-holder in being patient as they wait for things to come around, but I fear that he will not see fruition on this issue too soon.

Of course, the hon. Member for New Forest East has a very different position from that of my hon. Friend. I almost think that his working with my hon. Friend is a sort of diversion therapy from his frustration with his own leader. He vented that frustration very strongly back in 2010, when he wrote about the formation of the coalition. He said:

“It is not in dispute that, when Conservative MPs met at Westminster to endorse the proposed Coalition, we were categorically assured that the Liberals would have to accept the Trident successor programme. As David Cameron gave this guarantee, George Osborne nodded in confirmation. Unfortunately, all these assurances have since been disregarded.”

I hope that the Minister, in his response to the debate, may be able to shed some light on whether the hon. Member for New Forest East was either wilfully self-deluded or woefully misled by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in the assurances that they gave.

However, that situation is also based on a misapprehension that the Liberal Democrats are unilateralist disarmers—the hon. Member for New Forest East said that again today—because the policy that they have been pushing to get the Trident review is not a unilateralist one; it accepts the continuation of a nuclear deterrent. However, to try to provide some differentiation between themselves and others, they went for some rather exotic—as well as more expensive, destabilising and uncertain—alternatives, all of which were appropriately demolished by the review.

[Dr Lewis]

I do not intend to emulate the right hon. Gentleman by making as many interventions on him as he made on me, but I will say that I have never regarded him as a naive politician. Nevertheless, if he really thinks that the undercurrent and the real message of the stance taken by the Liberal Democrats on this matter is that they were really in favour of a nuclear deterrent, he should do what I did, although it might disturb his sleep a bit, and watch the rebroadcasting of the Liberal Democrats’ conference debates on this subject, because—believe me—all they were interested in during those debates was getting rid of Trident. One never heard anything mentioned about the positive case for a nuclear deterrent. It was another indirect way of going for unilateralism, because they knew that overt unilateralism would be too unpopular.

[Mr Spellar]

I always say that MPs and Ministers must be responsible for their own words, but if the hon. Gentleman rereads the debate from the time of the Trident review he will see clearly that at one stage the Liberal Democrats argued for the use of nuclear-enabled Cruise missiles. Apart from being a much more expensive option, that is—as I have already said—a far riskier option. I do not mean “risky” in terms of whether or not that option is a credible deterrent, although that is true as well, but in terms of being a destabilising factor, which could lead to much greater tension and—equally importantly—considerable risk of error.

[Dr Lewis]

In the spirit of compromise and convergence, can the two of us at least agree that, since the review of the Trident alternatives, the Liberal Democrat position—sending submarines to sea with no nuclear warheads on them, then waiting for a crisis to arise before sailing them back to port and arming them with nuclear warheads—has to be the most irresponsible fantasy-land thinking in the age of the nuclear deterrent? Furthermore, is it not a shame that no Liberal Democrats are here in Westminster Hall today to defend their decision, or—indeed—to explain it?

[Mr Spellar]

We can draw a veil now over the incoherence and absence of the Liberal Democrats, and get down to the serious and proper debate—it is certainly a proper debate to have—about Britain’s nuclear posture. It is a debate that my party has engaged in for a considerable number of years, in fact ever since the great post-war Attlee and Bevin Government commissioned Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, a policy that, I am pleased to say, continues today.

Having said that, none of us should underestimate the weighty issues—both the hon. Members who have already spoken stressed this point—that should weigh heavily on all those who have to make these decisions or arguments. I say that because it is very clear that there are huge issues. In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North, nobody underestimates the impact of nuclear weapons nor the potential devastation that they could cause. Nevertheless, nuclear weapons are a fact in our world.

I partly differ from my hon. Friend in this regard. He made passing reference to the non-proliferation treaty conference that is due to take place next year. Clearly, it will be resolved by—we could say by the nuclear weapon states, but frankly the key discussions that need to take place are between the USA and Russia. If agreement can be reached by them, we should rightly be part of the subsequent discussions. However, as I say, the key initial discussions must be between the USA and Russia.

I do not think that any of the participants in this debate about nuclear weapons, including those who have spoken today or in similar parliamentary debates, in any way underestimate the impact of nuclear weapons on those directly affected, on the environment or indeed on the wider world.

[Mr Spellar]

I take my hon. Friend back to the Attlee memorandum, and indeed to many other documents by those who have written about this subject. That is because the key issue—as Michael Quinlan, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, who is also a committed Christian and someone who has thought very deeply about these issues, has said—is the removal of the risks of war and instability. That is absolutely crucial in all these circumstances, including in the middle east. That is why it is so important to achieve a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, although Israel-Palestine is by no means the only source of tension in the middle east. We are seeing so many conflicts taking place in that unhappy region, and that is without any question of nuclear weapons, although, sadly, chemical weapons has been another issue. The resolution of those conflicts and the creation of a stable and peaceful environment is so important.

In the meantime, notwithstanding that, it is also important that the UK plays its part—indeed, it has played its part more than any other country, as I think the hon. Member for New Forest East mentioned—in reducing the proportion of our nuclear armoury. Significantly, that took place under the defence team that I was a member of in 1997 to 2001, but, to be fair I should say that it has been continued by our successors not only in the Labour Government, but in this Conservative Government as well.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

This is positively my last intervention on the right hon. Gentleman, although that is perhaps giving a hostage to fortune. Will he confirm that, when we took those unilateral steps of reducing our nuclear warhead stockpiles, there was no similar response from any of the other existing nuclear powers?

[Mr Spellar]

I think that is right. We had hoped that there would be such a response, but we took that decision in context and reduced to the minimum level necessary to maintain effective deterrence. We have reduced the explosive power of our British deterrent by some 75% since that time. That gives us good credentials and bona fides in those discussions.

I return to the point I made about the NPT. The crucial discussions have to be between the two major nuclear powers, which are still the United States and Russia. That needs to be re-emphasised.

The policy of the Labour party was made clear, as I made clear in previous interventions, by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) in a debate in the main Chamber on 17 July last year. He was explicit about our commitment to continuous at-sea deterrence—in the most cost-effective way possible, of course. I mentioned earlier that that was also the conclusion of the Government’s own review, which systematically and elegantly dismantled the Lib Dems’ excuses, even though the document contained the bizarre disclaimer, which I hope the Minister will touch on, that it was not a statement of Government policy.

Incidentally, I hope that this afternoon we will hear no more nonsense from Ministers, as we have heard previously in the main Chamber, claiming to speak not on behalf of the Government but on behalf of a political party, because I think that I have fairly well established, with rulings from the Speaker, that whoever speaks from the Dispatch Box—from that position and that microphone—actually speaks from the Treasury Bench and is therefore speaking on behalf of the Government. At a time when various Ministers seem to be dissociating themselves from the Government, it would help, particularly on an issue as significant as this, if the Government spoke with a clear voice.

An argument about cost is sometimes made regarding the more general Trident discussion, and we have mainly had that discussion here, rather than discussing the debate subject of the UK-US mutual defence agreement. Indeed, cost was mentioned in an intervention by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech). The question there was, would people rather have the nuclear deterrent or the Army? Would they rather have soldiers or air cover? It is not an appropriate comparison. However, one argument is that this programme costs too much. It therefore seems rather strange, if not perverse, to then argue against an agreement that substantially and significantly reduces the cost of the programme in a number of ways. For example, it reduces the cost of delivering the deterrent, even the design and development costs. It is reckoned that the common design has saved the UK in the region of £500 million and precludes the need to design, develop, manufacture and test our own missile system.

The Trident alternatives review estimated that a new warhead alone would cost £8 billion to £10 billion. I have already mentioned the extra cost of moving to cruise missiles. Regarding a cost-effective system, my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham made it clear that our two criteria were maintaining continuous at-sea deterrence and doing so with the minimum possible cost, and the approach I am talking about assists us towards the minimum possible cost.

There was a cross-debate on the independence of the system. The fact that we are buying F-35s, made in the US but with substantial elements made in the UK, does not mean that we do not have an independent Air Force. It is the control of the system, not the sourcing of the weaponry, that is the important test of independence. Therefore we ought to be clear that this is Britain’s independent deterrent, but in a NATO nuclear alliance, as was reaffirmed at the NATO summit. It is slightly odd that our now absent friends from the Scottish National party want to be anti-nuclear but want to join a nuclear alliance. That is a slightly perverse position to take.

I want to be clear, because the hon. Member for New Forest East wanted me to be clear—certainly, clearer than his own Government—about the Opposition’s position. We have made it clear through our policy statement. Labour has said that

“we are committed to a minimum, credible independent nuclear deterrent, delivered through a Continuous At-Sea Deterrent…Labour recognises the importance of Britain leading international efforts for multilateral nuclear disarmament”—

I mentioned the NPT—

“and non-proliferation. Following the action we took when in government, Labour would actively work to enhance momentum on global multilateral disarmament efforts and negotiations”.

The NPT conference in 2015 will be a key moment for a Labour Government to show leadership in achieving progress on global disarmament and anti-proliferation measures.

For all those reasons, we will support the reaffirmation of the agreement and the policy initiated by that great Labour Government of Attlee and Bevin.