Defence: Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)]

I very much agree with the closing comments of the right reverend Prelate that this enormous programme, which is of great significance for our country, should certainly be kept under continuous review. It has been the feature of the years of our deterrent and the changes made progressively over that time. I feel a certain nostalgia. I did the roll-out of one of the Vanguard submarines at Barrow-in-Furness and it is rather worrying to think that, if that is getting a bit too old and needs replacement, that might go for me as well.

If I were not here tonight I would be at the Sir Michael Quinlan memorial lecture, which is taking place this evening in the Foreign Office. There are many here in the Chamber tonight who knew him well. He was with me at the Ministry of Defence as an outstanding Permanent Secretary, but he was also known as the high priest of nuclear deterrence and was indeed credited, I believe, with writing out for Margaret Thatcher the moral case for nuclear weapons when she was looking for some reinforcement while under attack from—I observe the right reverend Prelate—certain Church leaders at the time. Michael Quinlan, as a keen Jesuit Catholic, produced the moral case for nuclear deterrence.

I was pleased to see that Michael Fallon, when speaking to the Policy Exchange a couple of months ago, quoted Michael Quinlan. He described him as the “great nuclear theorist” and former Ministry of Defence Permanent Secretary. Michael said:

“No safer system … is yet in view … To tear down the present structure, imperfect but effective, before a better one is firmly within our grasp, would be an immensely dangerous and irresponsible act”.

I would certainly like to get rid of nuclear weapons. I do not enjoy the idea that we have to have the nuclear deterrent and the continuous at-sea deterrence, with the cost that it represents. Yes, one can make the argument that, spread over the totality of government expenditure, it is not a huge sum, but it is still by any standards a large sum of money. Michael Quinlan made it clear that he was not in favour of the nuclear deterrent at any price, but he said—this echoes the right reverend Prelate—that we should stop and think at each stage about the justification and whether changes would be appropriate.

I am very conscious of something that the right reverend Prelate has just been talking about: whether we have a safer world. The Minister, engaged in his marathon tonight of the Investigatory Powers Bill and this debate, made this point very clearly indeed. We never saw the end of the Cold War coming. We never saw the Arab spring. We never saw the rise of Daesh. We never saw the extent of the danger of the proliferation of nuclear materials around the world with the break-up of the Soviet Union—the nuclear materials stored in Kazakhstan and in Ukraine—and the fact that now, terrorists are seeking any way they can to get hold of nuclear material. This is now a very much more dangerous world. My noble friend the Minister referred to a more assertive Russia. If it intends to base nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and the Crimea, that is a significant and worrying development. The number of failed states in the world at the moment represents a danger. The situation has changed a lot just in the past 10 years.

The programme we are looking at will not put something in place for the next five, seven, 10 years: we are talking about how far we can see ahead. The system we are talking about will give coverage and deterrence for the next 30 to 40 years. It is a long-term commitment. It is our ultimate insurance policy. Of course, it has happened at a rather interesting time with the recent Brexit. If we said that we were not going on with the deterrent, it would be extremely damaging to confidence in NATO, as my noble friend has said.

Some people think we could rely on the Americans to defend us. It is not unhelpful to the debate that we have a Republican candidate for the presidency who, if we had aggressors—perhaps the Russians overasserting themselves—and he was president, it would be very difficult to decide whether he would be prepared in certain circumstances to come to our assistance. That is only an illustration—I am sure he would—but it is an uncertainty we face.

Obviously, I would like to see every possible effort being made to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, as we have been doing continuously. There are other former Defence Secretaries here today and they will know that during their time in office, we were always looking to reduce the number of warheads. I am interested to see that only last year there was a further reduction from 48 to 40 warheads in each submarine. It certainly was progress going on in my time, and that has continued.

It is very relevant that we are having this debate today, so soon after the anniversary of the launch of the Battle of the Somme. One looks at the misery of two world wars, and the ultimate and total tragedy that affected so many places. We had those two great convulsions, and have gone 70 years without another. I was Secretary of State when the Berlin Wall came down. We had very interesting exchanges at that time. I talked to my Soviet opposite number and to some of the Soviet, and then Russian, generals, and there was no doubt that there were times when they thought they might advance and do a good bit of unification of Germany on their own. They knew that they could easily do it with conventional forces, but at the back of their minds was the ultimate risk of the nuclear deterrent. It is against that background, without any enjoyment of nuclear weapons or happiness at the cost, that I have no doubt that this is the right course to adopt: that we must continue with our policy of deterrence. It has been effective, kept the peace and avoided yet another world war. We, as a responsible nation, have a duty to continue to play our part.