Non-proliferation Treaty: 50th Anniversary Review

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Beth Winter

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on opening the debate. The review conference will bring together over 190 signatory states to discuss progress in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology since the last review conference in 2015 and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament.

The original treaty was negotiated by Labour’s Minister for Disarmament, the MP, later Lord, Fred Mulley, under Harold Wilson’s 1964 to 1970 Government, but it has been a formal commitment of all Governments—Labour and Conservative—since 1970. Nuclear disarmament is a priority of humanitarian politics, given the function of nuclear arms to wipe out mass civilian populations, as occurred tragically and appallingly in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with smaller weapons than those that exist today, and their use by all sides to assert foreign policy priorities throughout the cold war and since.

The text of the non-proliferation treaty sets out the aims of

“strengthening of trust between States in order to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery pursuant to a Treaty on general and complete disarmament”.

A clear goal of the treaty is to end the existence of nuclear weapons in states that possess them, alongside preventing their further proliferation. Therefore, it is truly regrettable that both Labour and Conservative Governments have retained nuclear weapons and failed to progress to the complete disarmament of the UK’s nuclear weapons, which we have agreed to.

Over 60 years, the UK has replaced Polaris with Trident warheads and missiles, and replaced the Resolution-class submarines first with the Vanguard class and now with the Dreadnought class. Furthermore, the Government announced in 2021, in their integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy, that alongside the new submarines the ceiling on the number of nuclear warheads held by the UK will increase by 40%, in a reversal of the downward trend seen in recent decades. The proposed changes in warhead numbers are a reversal of the UK statement by Baroness Anelay at the 2015 review conference and run counter to international momentum towards global nuclear abolition.

The repeated failure of the nuclear weapons powers to make progress on taking steps towards disarmament and to carry out disarmament at repeated NPT review conferences since the first one in 1975 has made it necessary for disarmament-committed states in the New Agenda Coalition to work with civil society to drive the process forward. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion referred to, that has resulted in the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which 86 states have signed up to and 66 states have ratified, and which has now entered into force. That is the right step forward.

However, the UK remains outside that treaty, which is dominated by nations from the global south but, critically, also includes forward-thinking countries such as New Zealand and Ireland. It really is regrettable that the UK national report on the NPT, which was published in November 2021, says nothing about the UK’s planned increase in the warhead ceiling or about engagement with the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and that its reference to the P5 process has no timetable for warhead reduction.

The war in Ukraine has resurrected ghosts of the cold war and brought home to all of us again the threat from nuclear weapons and nuclear accidents, at a time when both Russia and the USA have been modernising their weapons of mass destruction and the UK is also proposing to increase its nuclear arsenal, contrary to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

We need strong civil society movements in the UK and elsewhere to push the UK Government and others to join the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, and I am proud of the leadership being given by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Wales, of which I am a member. This year marks 40 years since all the then county councils in Wales declared themselves to be nuclear-free zones, which meant that nuclear weapons could not be stationed in Wales. That landmark decision is being celebrated this summer with a travelling exhibition across Wales—including a visit to my constituency during the week of 8 August—that commemorates the horrific bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making some powerful points. I note her point about nuclear weapons not being stationed in Wales, and I want to put on record that I am very envious of that. I wish that they were not stationed in Scotland, where they are located a stone’s throw from our largest population centre—despite the opposition of most elected politicians in the Scottish Parliament and Scottish politicians here, and against the will of civil society.

[Beth Winter]

I agree, and I hope that one day we will have a nuclear-free United Kingdom and indeed a nuclear-free world. The horrific consequences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain in our memories. Let us not forget that it was women from south Wales who had the courage and vision to march to and surround the US cruise missile base at Greenham Common, and I am proud of the fact that I was there as a child with my family.

As part of the work around the touring exhibition, CND Cymru is urging support for the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. CND Cymru says that while nuclear weapons exist we all live under the threat of such weapons being used. It is vital that there is support for the global abolition of nuclear weapons and that the UK Government start to engage with the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and eventually become a signatory to it, so that the world can be free from all nuclear weapons. I am pleased to say that the Welsh Senedd—our Welsh Parliament—voted to back the treaty in March, calling on all states to ratify it. I also welcome the fact that a number of local authorities in Wales have signed resolutions to the same effect.

We need action now more than ever. The world continues to be an extremely dangerous place, and I am sure that everybody in this room shares my desire for a future for our children, grandchildren and beyond. Unless we have a nuclear-free world, that is unlikely to happen.