Trident Renewal

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Godsiff]

The hon. Gentleman says that we are freeloading on the United States. In fact, NATO has taken part, I think wrongly, in actions to be the world’s policeman where its component forces, not just Americans but British and other participants, have gone into theatres of operations as part of the collective NATO force. I would argue that we would be far better off maintaining and developing our conventional forces. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there have been incidents where British troops have been killed in the middle east because of a lack of body armour and because some of our machinery has not been fit for purpose. If it is a choice between modernising and maintaining good conventional forces, properly equipped to do the job, and the mythology of an independent nuclear deterrent, I would most certainly go for the conventional forces.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

There is at the moment quite a debate across the United States about freeloading, with a high degree of concern that about 70% of the costs of NATO are paid for by the US. Is my hon. Friend seriously suggesting that we should front-load further costs and renege on our own responsibilities in relation to the nuclear deterrent? I honestly do not think we can say that and hold our heads high in the world. In relation to the body armour, that was an issue of slow procurement, not cost.

[Mr Godsiff]

My hon. Friend is suggesting that if, all of a sudden, we gave up our 40 missiles, America would rush in to create 40 extra missiles to compensate for those that we are not going to have. The Americans have expressed regret to us about cuts that we have made in our conventional forces; they would like us to do more in that regard. I would strongly argue that that is a much greater priority than the myth of our so-called independent nuclear deterrent.

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[Sir Nick Harvey]

I do not think that I have made my point quite clear to the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that we have a nuclear adversary, but I am saying that we should keep the component parts of the deterrent for the time being so that if in future we concluded that we did have such an adversary, we could resume patrols. I am absolutely with him in saying that for something to have a deterrent effect, it needs to be mobilised and deployed in a timely matter, but I simply do not accept his proposition that—out of the blue, out of nowhere—an adversary will pop up who wishes to do us irreparable harm and to take the global consequences of doing so.

[Mrs Moon]

The hon. Gentleman is very kind to give way. He was a Minister at the time of the strategic defence and security review, and he signed up to it. I did not agree with many parts of that review, but it made it very plain that this country has nuclear opponents and that there is a nuclear threat. Has his opinion therefore changed not just since the 1980s but since 2010, because that is what he is saying?

[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.

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[John Woodcock]

I will give way, but then I really want to take up less time than others have done.

[Mrs Moon]

Does my hon. Friend think that the world is a safer place since 1980? North Korea and Russia have increased their arsenals, Pakistan’s arsenal has grown exponentially and Iran is trying to develop a nuclear capability. Are we actually safer since 1980?

[John Woodcock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The global situation is profoundly unstable. Whether or not there is a nuclear adversary precisely at this moment, we simply cannot say what will be the case in the next 20, 30 or 40 years. That is the decision we are making now: what threats we will face while other countries are increasing, rather than decreasing, their arsenals.

Labour is proud of its record on non-proliferation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was the Labour Foreign Secretary who committed the UK to a “global zero”—a world completely free from nuclear weapons. Britain was the first nuclear state in the world to sign up, before President Obama, before Russia—although it has clearly reneged on what it said—and, to the best of my knowledge, before either of the parties who have proposed the motion. They were busy thinking small, as is their wont. They were telling Scots that the answer to this issue was to expel nuclear submarines a couple of hundred miles south of the border—they are not coming to Barrow, by the way. They did that while having the cheek—I am not sure whether this is parliamentary language or not, Madam Deputy Speaker—to have the unbridled hypocrisy to say that nuclear weapons were grotesque and inhuman, but that they wished an independent Scotland to remain part of the specifically nuclear alliance of NATO.

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[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

It is an old adage in Parliament that there are no votes in defence. Perhaps today has blown that out of the water. As I sat here, I was wondering whether the party political stuff should enter into this debate on a crucial defence and security issue. I have come to the view that it is helpful. I think the public need to know where the parties stand and the consequences of the votes they will be casting in May.

I was disappointed that the Secretary of State chose to refer to the Labour party as “the shower opposite”. Personally, I found that offensive and it was beneath the dignity of his office. I therefore feel free to point out that he was wrong to suggest that the Labour party is in any way lacking a total commitment to

“a minimum credible independent, nuclear deterrent, delivered through a Continuous At-Sea Deterrent”.

I will point out to the Conservative party that the one thing on which I have agreed with the Scottish National party is that its decision—in front of the Defence Committee, the Secretary of State seemed not to understand or know about it—to remove the capability offered by the Nimrod maritime reconnaissance and attack aircraft, the MRA4, would, as the National Audit Office has said, have an adverse effect on the protection of the strategic nuclear deterrent.

The Secretary of State told the Committee that the planes were not available and had never flown. Later in the evidence session, however, we were told by a senior officer in the RAF that he had actually flown the MRA4. Let us get our act together. Let us get our facts accurate. The Labour party is for a continuous at-sea deterrent and is committed to the defence and security of the United Kingdom.

I am pleased that we have a red line regarding some of the coalitions being talked about. The public need to understand that it will be impossible for Labour to enter a coalition with the Scottish nationalists, the Green party and Plaid Cymru, because of their red line on removing the nuclear deterrent. That is fine; at least we know where we stand. The public also know where the Liberal Democrats stand: they want to buy nuclear submarines but park them somewhere. It is like saying, “We’ll have a burglar alarm on our house but we’ll never turn it on, because we don’t believe there are any burglars out there.” The party political thing has gone too far but it has been helpful, in that at least the public now know where the parties stand.

Those opposed to the nuclear deterrent like to take the moral high ground, as if opposition to mass slaughter and a desire to protect this green and pleasant land were more in their blood than in the blood of we who believe that a nuclear deterrent is essential to the protection of the UK. I used to be a paid-up member of CND. When I was first elected to the House 10 years ago—new Members arrive with nothing, no office, no computer, no staff—the first letter that came across my desk was from a Mrs Hopkins in Bridgend, asking where I stood on the nuclear deterrent. I thought I knew where I stood, but I wanted to be the best MP that Bridgend could have, and I was not just going to tell her what my opinion was. I did my research and I spent a lot of time in the Library, and she was shocked by the letter she got back, because it was not what she had expected, and neither was it what I had expected to write. Having done the research and looked at all the risks and arguments, I realised that the nuclear deterrent was critical to Britain’s defence and security.

There has been lots of talk about finances and how much of the defence budget we should be comfortable with spending. We are told it is 5% or 6% at the moment, but some ask, “What if it rose to 10%?” Quite honestly, I would be worried about what the Government were spending the money on, and whether they were spending across the board and taking the security of the UK seriously, if the majority of our defence budget was going on the nuclear deterrent. It is part of a package. It is not the only thing; it is part of the thing. Yes, there are new risks and threats to this country—there always are—but just because there are new ones coming does not mean that the old ones have disappeared, because they have not; they are still there, and they are serious.

I am a member of the Defence Committee and of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, so I talk a lot with other Governments about defence issues and where Britain stands in the world of defence. I have been to the Pentagon and the State Department, and I have asked them how critical is Britain’s nuclear deterrent. They see it not as an add-on, a joke, an irrelevance, but as essential to NATO. How do they think the American people would feel if we said, “We can’t afford to spend this, so you fess up. You pay for Britain and the rest of NATO’s nuclear capability”? That is not going to happen—let’s be real. America should not and cannot pay for the whole of the defence of NATO. It already pays too much, which is why Britain, at the NATO conference, was urging NATO allies to step up to the 2%. It is why we were so vociferous about it.

I have not just talked to the Americans; I have talked to countries in eastern Europe who face the nuclear threat and know the reality of Russia. They are terrified of that nuclear threat from Russia. It is something we need to take seriously. I have talked to the Afghans and the Pakistanis. I have repeatedly asked questions and the thing that comes out clearly is that nobody in the world would feel safer if we stepped back from our responsibilities to maintain our nuclear deterrence.

This debate is timely and important. I am aware, Mr Speaker, that you want others to speak, but may I briefly say that if Members still have any doubts, they should look at the Trident commission, which was cross-party and reported in July 2014? It said:

“If there is more than a negligible chance that the possession of nuclear weapons might play a decisive future role in the defence of the United Kingdom and its allies in preventing nuclear blackmail or in affecting the wider security context with which the UK sits, then they should be retained.”

They were cross-party speakers—key individuals in the history of this House. That was their finding; it should be ours too.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—