Defence: Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a richly informed but short debate. I am sure all Members who have taken part would have wanted more time, and I have no doubt that the Minister will, like me, bring that to the attention of the usual channels on both sides.

In August 1945, the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, set up a Cabinet committee to examine the feasibility of Britain acquiring the atomic bomb. When, in October 1946, the Americans ended their nuclear co-operation, the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, said:

“We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs … we’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it.”

In 1947, the final decision was taken to go ahead. In one sense, therefore, the Labour Party, on behalf of the British people, has ownership of the policy to have an independent nuclear deterrent. Our commitment to this policy remains steadfast today, despite some twists and turns over the past 70 years.

Maintaining Britain’s nuclear deterrent is the policy of the Labour Party, as my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe said at the start of the debate. It was a Labour Government who, in December 2006, published a White Paper. Noble Lords will remember those things called Green Papers and White Papers, and perhaps the Government will take note, because they would be of great value. The White Paper was on reviewing our nuclear deterrent. It set out the conclusions of a series of studies into whether Britain should still have a nuclear deterrent, and if the answer was yes, how that nuclear deterrent could best be provided.

The White Paper concluded that, while there was no nation with both the capability and intent to threaten the independence of the UK, we could not dismiss the possibility that a major nuclear threat might emerge. Having considered options for different ways of providing a nuclear deterrent, it finally concluded that the most effective system was a further class of submarine carrying ballistic missiles. In March 2007, the House of Commons voted 409 to 161 to endorse the conclusions of the White Paper. Work started immediately on assessing the different options, to determine how best to set up an affordable ballistic missile submarine capable of providing a credible deterrent capability well into the second half of the century. This culminated in a successful initial business case, and in April 2011 the Treasury approved the initial gate decision, which was announced to Parliament the following month.

Ernest Bevin said that we had to have the nuclear deterrent no matter what the cost. Many people would say that that was then, and that the cost now runs to tens of billions of pounds. But what is the cost of not having the deterrent? The true cost of conflict cannot be measured in money; it is measured in lives lost. Some 60 million people were killed in the Second World War—perhaps three times the number who lost their lives in the First World War, and most of them civilians. The plain fact is that resisting tyranny never comes cheap. If the possession of a nuclear deterrent helps keep the peace and saves lives, for me that is the better measure of the true cost.

I accept that many others will argue that the possession of nuclear weapons is morally wrong, and even if they could be justified on moral grounds, the scale of destruction that would be unleashed if they were used is too appalling to contemplate. But over the last seven decades, Britain’s foreign and defence policy has sought to prevent a nuclear holocaust by leaving an enemy in no doubt that the cost of aggression would be a price too much for it to bear also. Like it or not, in today’s world, in order to deter we have also to threaten.

I have heard people argue that we should scrap the nuclear deterrent. They say we should put our trust in human goodness and the determination of humanity to survive, no matter the challenges. But the key word here is trust. Recently, I read a very interesting paper written by Professor Nigel Biggar entitled Living with Trident. In it, he comments on a Church of Scotland report in 2009 which exhorted people to “trust in God” instead of placing people in a position “of fear or threat”. He writes:

“It may be true—as I believe it is—that we should always trust God. But it really doesn’t follow that we should always trust Vladimir Putin or Islamic State”.

He was right on this. My friend and colleague Kevan Jones MP, in a paper entitled Trident Myths and Facts, states, “Definitions of deterrence vary” but quotes a very good definition put forward by the prominent scholar and political scientist, Kenneth Waltz, that,

“nuclear weapons dissuade states from going to war more surely than conventional weapons do”.

On Monday, we considered the Statement following the NATO summit in Warsaw, where it was agreed that we will deploy troops in Estonia and Poland. NATO is another example of the Labour Party’s commitment to the defence of our country, as it was set up in 1949 with the help of the then Labour Government. We also considered on Monday the probable Russian response, and it will be interesting to see whether this was considered at today’s NATO-Russia Council meeting. Although we must be—and want to be—sensitive to the Russian point of view, we must make it clear that we will support our NATO partners in that region.

What do we know of Russia’s nuclear programme? We know that Russia will continue to maintain a robust and capable arsenal of strategic and non-strategic weapons for the foreseeable future. We know that, to support this policy, the Russian Government are making strong investments in their nuclear weapons programmes. We also know that priorities for their strategic nuclear forces include force modernisation and command and control facilities upgrades.

I said on Monday that on these Benches we are proud of NATO, an organisation which is the defender of our freedoms and way of life, and in an uncertain world a source of security for many around the globe. Britain’s nuclear deterrence is a key to NATO’s strategy. That strategy is deterrence, based on the appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional weapons. NATO is committed to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, it will maintain itself as a nuclear alliance. This was reaffirmed at the Wales NATO summit in 2014. The Nuclear Planning Group provides the forum for consultation on NATO’s nuclear deterrence. The United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent supports collective security through NATO for the Euro-Atlantic area.

As outlined in the 2006 White Paper, nuclear deterrence plays an important part in NATO’s overall defensive strategy, and the UK’s nuclear forces make a substantial contribution. If the UK were to unilaterally disarm but wished to remain a member of NATO, it would still need to accept that nuclear weapons are integrated into the whole of NATO’s force structure.

Britain, throughout its history, has always punched above its weight in the world, and most often for good. We have continued that role in NATO. If we ceased to possess a nuclear deterrent, our ability to influence the United States and others would greatly diminish—and the knock-on effect would greatly reduce NATO’s ability to defend. Therefore the United Kingdom would still be covered by the overall NATO nuclear umbrella, and would have to remain in the decision-making processes relating to the deployment of nuclear weapons.

In the more than seven decades since the world first came to terms with nuclear weapons after the end of the last war there has been no direct military conflict between the major powers, and no state covered by another state’s nuclear umbrella has been the target of a major state attack. I am the first to admit that it is impossible to prove that this situation has arisen because of nuclear deterrence. But it is also impossible to prove otherwise.

I have not yet reached my threescore years and ten, but I am not far short of it. And unlike my parents’ generation, which saw two world wars and the deaths of untold millions of people, all my life I have lived in a country where I am free and safe. I want that for my children and my grandchildren too—to live in freedom and safety. I believe that the possession of a nuclear deterrent has helped keep this country safe for the last seven decades, and I believe it will keep it safe in the future.