House of Lords debate Trident

12.09.00pm GMT Thu 25th Jan 2007

No New Trident logo

Yesterday the House of Lords debated the White Paper: The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent. The Liberal Democrats were very vocal during the debate, below is a summary of their speeches and a link to the whole debate.

Lord Wallace of Saltaire kicked off the debate for the Liberal Democrats calling for the decision to be delayed until around 2012-2104. He dismissed the need for a deterrent to keep or increase the UK's status by saying "Without exception, all the experts who gave evidence to the Liberal Democrat working group dismissed the argument that Britain needs to maintain a nuclear deterrent in order to remain a great power with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council."

Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank also spoke reminded us that "It is nearly 50 years since I attended the meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, on 17 February 1958, that effectively launched the campaign for nuclear disarmament." And that "Almost a whole generation later, in July 1980, I replied in the House of Commons as shadow Secretary of State for Defence to the Conservative Government's Statement that they intended to replace the existing Polaris nuclear deterrent with Trident. In a cautious response, I said that the Government's case had not been made but that I did not object to the principle. Many angry Labour Back-Benchers were not pleased, saying that they were in "utter despair" and that it was a "disgrace". Shortly afterwards I was removed from my role in a Labour Party's television programme and replaced by Robin Cook, the then acceptable voice of unilateral disarmament; in due course I was sacked from defence by the Labour Leader. How times have changed." he also said "I share the White Paper's view that no one, hand on heart, can wholly discount the possibility of a major threat to Britain through our grandchildren's lives. Despite recent foreboding, we may some time find ourselves living through the sunny uplands of unprecedented peace. But, taking the most optimistic view, the ultimate risk-and the danger to Britain-would remain. I recognise and respect all those who have long been opposed to nuclear weapons on ethical grounds, at every time and in every place. Yet I am not persuaded that, if nuclear weapons were, reluctantly, acceptable in the Cold War, they cannot be morally acceptable, sadly and reluctantly, in the years ahead."

Baroness Williams of Crosby discussed the history of the deterrence by saying "in the initial period of nuclear warfare, the main argument advanced to President Truman and others, and which has been quoted in this debate, was that a weapon of such immense destructive power would bring the war to an end very quickly. Indeed, after Nagasaki and Hiroshima that is what happened. It was regarded as a weapon beyond all the weapons that human beings had known about until then. In a second period, to which my noble friend Lord Rodgers and the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, referred, the Cold War, the nuclear weapon was essentially justified by the fact that it deterred the use of other nuclear weapons. All of us remember the title of that policy: mutually assured destruction. The moral argument for nuclear weapons was simply that they would never have to be deployed, because if they were, the response would be totally destructive. There is a sense in which, in both these periods, there was a rational argument to be made." Baroness Williams added "One of the things that troubles me slightly about this debate is that the assumption made from the very beginning that deterrence was a rational response to a rational attack may no longer hold good. The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, talked about maniacal power. We have to recognise that at least some element of terrorism may not be deterred in any way by the prospect of destruction. It might strangely even be attracted by it, so powerful are some of the nihilistic and, indeed, death-loving elements that we now confront."

The Baroness commented on the UK's role in preventing the spread of nuclear material by saying "It is a shame that in this debate we have so little addressed the nature of terrorism as distinct from the old-fashioned nuclear attack that is now probably highly unlikely. If we address the issue of terrorism, for a moment at least, one of the claims on our budget has to be the absolute control over existing nuclear materials and restricting and, indeed, stopping access to those materials by utterly irresponsible groups. Yet we as a country contribute extremely little towards such efforts to control the spread of nuclear materials. As a country we have not particularly favoured suggestions such as the fissile material cut-off, the nuclear fuel bank or the reduction in warning times of existing nuclear weapons, all of which would be a very important part of making the world a safer place."

Baroness Williams concluded by talking about the hypocrisy of the current nuclear states by saying "There are two crucial elements to how we could strengthen the NPT. First, we should begin to recognise that Article VI of the NPT bites on the nuclear states, not just the non-nuclear states. Many of us are fed up with the unending hypocrisy of lecturing the non-nuclear nations about the need for them not to have nuclear weapons, while happily retaining our own and not even seeking to reduce them. In this context, I must be fair to the Minister. The United Kingdom has made more efforts than most to reduce the scale of its nuclear deterrent, and I welcome that. But generally speaking, the nuclear powers have made very little effort to obey Article VI, and we still see in the United States, Russia and other countries attempts to develop new generations of various kinds of nuclear weapon, such as the bunker buster. Secondly, it is important for the nuclear powers to reduce their vastly unnecessary stocks of nuclear weapons, to give some encouragement to those being asked not to enter the nuclear league."

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer looked look at some of the arguments about the renewal of an independent nuclear deterrent in the context of climate change. She said "Climate change will bring unknown consequences. Scientists are unable to model exactly where we are going with climate change, and social scientists cannot model what the consequences will be. Among the possible effects that they have outlined are mass migration, resource shortages, especially of food and water, and an atmosphere of great instability and vulnerability. In such an atmosphere, it could be argued, it would be important to have an independent nuclear deterrent to deter people from encroaching on our resources would launch a nuclear attack on us, as by doing so it would pollute the very resources it sought to acquire. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, has outlined the various scenarios. He is evidently far more qualified to do so than I am, but very serious questions need to be asked about how relevant nuclear deterrence is in this context. But, can we really envisage a situation where we would launch an attack on people, for example refugees, threatening to overwhelm us? I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester that there has not been a debate about the morals of when we would use such a weapon in this context. Nor is it likely that a country which wanted to acquire our land and water resources." On the cost she said "There are some striking parallels between the calculations of the overall cost of buying the missiles, replacing the submarines and maintaining the system for 30 years-estimated by some as £76 billion-and the cost of making some real inroads into reducing our carbon emissions by a level approaching the Government's target. So far as anyone can calculate, that figure is £60 billion to £80 billion. So when discussing where resources should go, it is important that climate change is part of the equation." On the legacy for future generations she said "Much has been made of what we will leave to our children as an inheritance if we do not have the security of a nuclear weapons system. However, I believe that world security will be about adequate energy, water and food in the 21st century, and about each country having controlled its needs and consumption so that it feels secure enough. That will take a sea change in the amount of investment in research and development, agriculture, water conservation and so on. We will probably have to redesign the very way we live. We need that sort of investment for a secure future. We should have already decided to make such investment now. Instead, the Government seem to feel that they must make a thoroughly premature decision on a weapons system whose relevance in the 21st century many analysts, including many speakers this afternoon, have questioned. Last week it was revealed that the Doomsday clock, which was created in 1947 by a group of atomic scientists to calculate the risk of nuclear catastrophe, had moved closer to midnight by several minutes. In my lifetime it has always been between about 10 minutes to midnight and only two minutes to midnight. Midnight is wipe-out time. This year the scientists moved the time forward because of climate change risks being faced without progress on the non-proliferation treaty. If it has moved in that way, climate change has to be taken into consideration in this debate."

Baroness Tonge MP in Iraq War protest

Baroness Tonge reminded the House that "We are discussing the most terrible weapons of mass destruction ever devised. They are there now. They could destroy the world many times over and they could be used. Whoever starts it, no one can win a nuclear war, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, has reminded us from the Russell-Einstein manifesto. We are discussing Armageddon. I remind us all of what that means by referring to a report made in the 1980s by the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons. I hesitated on that name because I was a member of that campaign and we used to call ourselves "Docs against the bomb". As we have been reminded, the bomb at Hiroshima was a terrible event in human history and I make no apology now for a passionate doctor to follow a passionate lawyer on the subject, because we need to remind ourselves what happened at Hiroshima, committed by a very small bomb by today's standards. It killed 68,000 people immediately and badly injured 76,000. Countless thousands of people went missing and were never accounted for. I quote from an eyewitness cited in the report to which I referred: "No one knew what had happened. Skin was hanging from faces and hands of the survivors. People lay on pavements vomiting and waiting for death. They were too weak to move and no one was there to help. A priest came in from the outskirts and found a group of soldiers with wholly burned faces and eye sockets hollow with the fluid from melting eyes running down cheeks". They had been unfortunate enough to see the blast. The eyewitness continued: "Three out of 45 hospitals remained in Hiroshima, most of the doctors dead or too badly wounded to help others. In the Red Cross hospital 1.6 km from the explosion, ceilings had fallen, plaster, dust, vomit were everywhere, thousands of dead and dying patients lying inside and on the driveway". In many ways those people about whom I have been talking were the lucky ones. They died in a few days, but in the weeks, months and years that followed thousands more died from the effects of bone marrow suppression, cancer, bowel erosions and diarrhoea, and later generations suffered and still suffer from genetic disorders. That is what we are talking about. We are not talking about toy weapons. All that was from a 13 kilotonne bomb, a small bomb by today's standards. We now use megatonne bombs, 760 times more damaging than that dropped on Hiroshima if we do the sums. A bomb dropped on Westminster would mean no London as far out as Croydon, Enfield and Kingston: no people, no emergency workers, no hospitals, even no Government. We must not forget the scale of those weapons." Again referring to the hypocrisy of the nuclear states she said "Many noble Lords have questioned whether the possession of nuclear weapons acts as a deterrent. I will be brief about that, but we cannot agree if we say that our possession of a nuclear bomb is a deterrent to nuclear war that other countries should not have that deterrent. It is totally illogical. Iran has been mentioned: how can we tell Iran that it must not have a nuclear weapon when its neighbouring country Israel has one, on the admission of its Prime Minister a few weeks ago? I sometimes think rather flippantly that if it was truly a deterrent the international community should make sure that everyone has one little bomb and then we could all deter one another. What a nonsense concept it is; and what of this non-proliferation treaty mentioned by many noble Lords? We agreed then that every signatory should have nuclear energy if they wished. We are complaining about Iran at the moment. We agreed that those without the bomb should not try to obtain one, and that those five countries with the bomb would negotiate the elimination of all nuclear weapons in time." On the specifics of renewing Trident she questioned its legality by saying "In keeping and updating Trident, surely we are acting illegally against the non-proliferation treaty. I would like the Minister in his summing up to clarify that point for me. It is a sincere request for clarification and information. As other noble Lords have said, if terrorists strike with nuclear weapons, where do we strike back? Do we drop nuclear bombs on the civilian populations of north Pakistan, where it is alleged that there are terrorists hiding, or Manchester, where we know that there were terrorists hiding after 7 July? Where do we drop those bombs? They are not irrelevant to a terrorist attack." and "Nevertheless, let us not doubt that by updating this system, we are pushing the world into a new arms race. Worse than that, my country will lose any moral authority it may have left since the Government's disastrous foreign policy adventures in the Middle East."

Lord Roper also spoke in the debate saying "The underlying decision as to whether Britain should or should not have nuclear weapons has always been a difficult one for me. I have ethical, economic and political questions, and I should like to look at all three. Since their first use in 1945, nuclear weapons have always raised very difficult ethical questions. I was glad that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester raised that so clearly in his remarks. The scale of the destruction they can produce is considered so horrific that the normal jus ad bellum, the concept of proportionality, is extremely difficult to apply. During the Cold War the existential threat to our society of a military attack by the Soviet Union was considered so great that the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrent or-and this was equally the case for other NATO members-membership of an alliance whose ultimate defence was nuclear, was accepted. But I consider that one is in exactly the same ethical situation whether one has nuclear weapons oneself or if one is a member of an alliance whose defence system is based on the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons. However, the removal of the clear and present danger provided by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact inevitably means that the ethical issues will have to be revisited in any discussion of the replacement of Britain's nuclear capability. The case is certainly not easy to make, but on balance I feel that the degree of uncertainty and instability in the world is such that a social decision to renounce would have to be taken with very great care. My second concern has always been to do with resources. Even during the Cold War it was not altogether clear, given the effectiveness of the Atlantic alliance and the nuclear capabilities of the United States, whether a duplication on this side of the Atlantic was a particularly useful allocation either of the defence budget or of the budget as a whole. The arguments we have heard today and are in the White Paper for a second decision centre have some merit in adding to the uncertainty facing one's opponent, thus reinforcing the deterrence. But it is difficult to ignore the arguments of my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, that status might have a part to play. Indeed, in his remarks the noble Lord, Lord Powell, suggested that it certainly does. Again, in the current financial environment and the very difficult budgetary situation facing the Armed Forces, there must be assurances that the significant expenditure described in the White Paper, and which will be spent between 2012 and 2027, is not achieved at the cost of the other pressing and immediate needs of the Armed Forces. Indeed, the experience of both the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and the noble Lord, Lord Moonie, of dealing with this from within the Ministry of Defence was very revealing. The political problems are related to proliferation. Those issues were discussed by my noble friend Lady Williams. I do not share the view that British renunciation of its nuclear weapons would have a direct effect on any of the existing nuclear weapons states or the potential proliferators, particularly Iran and North Korea. In that respect I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce. On the other hand, the disappointing progress of nuclear arms control in the post-Cold War world has made it more and more difficult to maintain the non-proliferation regime. Although the 2000 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was a success, the failure of the 2005 review conference to agree any conclusions really set back a good deal what had been started in 2000, including in particular the 13 steps which were referred to. The failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the lack of progress on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty suggest to the non-nuclear weapons states that the nuclear weapons states are not treating their responsibilities seriously."

Lord Roberts

Lord Roberts of Llandudno reminded the debate what weapons are used for by saying "My Lords, I venture into a debate on the nuclear deterrent because I cannot stay silent when this type of question comes before us. I know nothing at all about military systems and not much about armaments, but I know a wee bit about people. I am concerned about the consequences of this House's decisions for people. I thought that I would be a lone voice in my approach on these and other Benches, but I am not. Others share my deep concern. Whatever the weapon-a bullet, a cluster bomb or one of our nuclear weapons-it is always designed for one end alone: to maim and destroy." He added "Noble Lords will remember, prior to the invasion of Iraq-to which these Benches were opposed-there was a t-shirt saying "Not in my name". That is I why I am speaking this evening. Will any decision taken here be one of which we will proud to say, "I supported that" or, in the Commons, "We voted for that"? The consequences could be not just 200,000 but, because of the weapons we have today, millions of people. A noble Lord mentioned this evening that a modern warhead could wipe out the whole of London. We must lead the argument, "Not in our name". We must adopt a moral stance, and see the effect that any decision will have on children. When Trident was introduced over 20 years ago, there were still nations we could call a threat. You could then argue for this type of nuclear weaponry. As covered in the debate, however, neither China, France, the United States nor any other nation with nuclear weapons is a threat to us. The threat is the enemy within. That is where we should spend our money; on surveillance, intelligence and the apprehending of these people before they are able to create their own holocaust. We are combating part of a terrorist attack."

Lord Garden

Lord Garden also spoke in the debate saying "My Lords, the future of the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent is a major national issue. I welcome the opportunity that this thoughtful debate has given us to start to explore so many factors. The key decision, to which many noble Lords have alluded, is whether the United Kingdom should plan to continue as a nuclear-weapon state. We have heard a diversity of views from all sides of the House, which is scarcely surprising. It reflects the divided views throughout the country. A Populus opinion poll was reported in the Times on 13 December last year which said that 52 per cent of the population is in favour of staying in the nuclear business." He reminded the House of his experience by saying "Like many other noble Lords, I have history in this area, not in terms of being a unilateralist or a Minister, but I have been closely involved with the national nuclear capability since I first sat at 15-minutes readiness in quick reaction alert Canberras with American nuclear bombs aboard in Germany nearly 40 years ago, and I went on to Vulcan nuclear bomber squadrons. In the wonderful days when the Ministry of Defence did not mind one writing books about policy issues, I wrote a book on nuclear policy as a group captain and later, in the MoD in the 1990s, I was involved in the operational and defence programme issues of our deterrent force." In calling for the retention of a deterrent he said "In coming to my own judgment, I have started from a basic assumption that nuclear weapons have only one purpose-on this I disagree with my noble friend Lord Roberts, who describes all weapons as designed to maim and kill. The only purpose of a nuclear weapon is to deter the use of other nuclear weapons. If our weapons are ever used, they will have failed in their purpose. Therefore, I find no great problem with the immorality or the legality of deterrence. In that sense, I welcome the announcement of the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, of the abandonment of the sub-strategic system, which was always a dubious concept. It is good to know that tonight that has gone into the history books." He concluded by mentioned the upcoming Liberal Democrat Conference debate by saying "Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, called for consultations. I totally agree. This is the start of a national debate, I hope, and not the end of a national debate. As your Lordships have heard from the Benches behind me, we in our party have many diverse views. We are going to take the policy that I have outlined to our spring conference to have it adopted or modified by the party. I will be very interested to hear what the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman is going to do to sample the opinion of his party. The Populus poll shows that 64 per cent of his party supports nuclear weapons, so he will probably have a moderately easy time with the policy. What will the Labour Party do to sample public opinion? That stands at 45 per cent, which suggests that it has problems. I am happy to tell the House that the Populus poll shows that Liberal Democrats were at 52 per cent-exactly the same as the rest of the nation. I look forward to hearing how the Labour Party will sample public opinion in a realistic way-and it should start with its members."

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