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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.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made the point about jobs. Jobs can be found equally well in the cutting-edge, scientific developments of carbon-reduction technologies and, not least in this country, in adaptation—as we know, climate change is already under way. We have to adapt much more rapidly and take cognisance of the issue more than we have hereto. The Government are budgeting, I believe, less than £1 billion a year to tackle directly all the climate change issues, but, as the Stern report showed, we need to spend far more than that and far quicker. The speed with which we tackle these effects will be crucial; we cannot afford to spend at the end of the period.
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 about 10 minutes to midnight. Midnight is wipe-out time. This year the
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6.19 pm
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. I am privileged to be the president of the World Disarmament Campaign; and I should tell my noble friends Lord Foulkes and Lord O’Neill that there are an awful lot of very worried people out there, even if they do not always succeed in making their voices heard.
We may begin with a premise on which we can all agree: we want to make this country as secure as possible in a dangerous world. The issue is how that can best be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, has just reminded us that threats come in a range of forms, so we should not take too narrow a view of what threatens the security of this country. Even if we take the narrow view, the question is bound to arise of what contribution Trident can make in response to threats.
In their response to the report of the House of Commons Defence Committee, the Government said:
“We do not see Trident as a weapon system for fighting wars, but as having a fundamentally political role in deterring aggression”.
A deterrent can deter only if there is a possible situation and manner in which someone might contemplate using it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, quite properly reminded us, we are considering a devastating weapon. My noble friend Lord Drayson told us that it was intended only for strategic purposes; I hope that my noble friend Lord Triesman can elaborate on that when he concludes.
I realise that we want to keep potential enemies guessing, but surely the whole purpose of this debate is to inform us what is proposed, so that we may pass some kind of judgment on it. Would it be used only to counter a nuclear attack, or could it be used against conventional forces? Might it be used against enemy forces, to counter a political invasion of this country? In a contemporary form of warfare, are we likely to see enemy forces conveniently deployed in an open battlefield? Even leaving aside the question of fallout, would we explode our warheads among the tower blocks of Bermondsey or the housing estates of Basildon?
Contemporary wars, as nearly everyone now agrees, are fought among civilian populations in narrow streets or public squares. If the proposed use is for retaliatory purposes, are we proposing to use them against other people’s crowded cities? Do we envisage another, bigger Hiroshima? I hope that no other country would believe us capable of that, but if they do not, how and where is the possible deterrent effect? A credible deterrent would, surely, need to be more proportionate and user-friendly.
That brings us to the next question. It is difficult to consider what our response to an anticipated threat should be without having some idea of its nature and
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“Currently no state has both the intent to threaten our vital interests and the capability to do so with nuclear weapons”.
The Government’s case, as I understand it, can be encapsulated in the slogan “You never know”, which has been given as a reason for everything from galoshes to elephant guns.
The Defence Committee considered that the most pressing threat faced by the UK is international terrorism, to which a number of noble Lords referred. To my knowledge, no one has sought to argue that nuclear weapons could be used against terrorists, or in any event that they would be deterred by the possibility of such use. If it is suggested that they might be used against rogue states, should a rogue state that encourages terrorists be visited with nuclear warheads? If that is so, perhaps my noble friend Lord Triesman could make it clear.
The problem with preparing to meet a threat that cannot be assessed is that what the Government propose may create the very situation that they fear. It would not be the first time that a country created defences against a real or imagined threat and other countries, with absolutely no previous aggressive intention, perceived the defences as a threat to themselves and responded by creating their own defences. We then have a vicious cycle: of defence perceived as a threat, leading to defence perceived as a threat, leading to defence—the classic paradigm of an arms race.
I return to the initial premise. The Government are concerned to safeguard the security of this country; so are we all. The question then arises of how that can best be done. An answer that many people give is that Britain would be most secure in a world where nuclear weapons do not proliferate, a world where the objectives of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty are realised, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has pointed out. They would say that anything undermining the treaty is counterproductive and leaves us not safer but in greater danger. That raises the question: if the Government believe that nuclear weapons are essential to our security, how can we convince the non-nuclear states that they are not essential to theirs? The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, who is not in his place, raised that question.
The White Paper addresses that question in box 3.1:
There are two criticisms of that. First, it does not answer the question. If nuclear weapons are essential to the security of the United Kingdom, are the non-nuclear states to be left devoid of security? To point out that they have no right to be secure will hardly persuade them.
Secondly, that answer rests on a false premise. The White Paper points out, quite correctly, that Article VI of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty does not
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The treaty was envisaged as an interim measure until nuclear and general disarmament could be achieved. The suggestion that the non-nuclear states were prepared to accept second-class status for eternity would have been an idea from cloud-cuckoo-land.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, could the noble and learned Lord explain why, then, all signatories to the non-proliferation treaty agreed that it should be continued sine die, in perpetuity, in 1995?
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, as I understand it, that question arose then because it appeared that compliance with Article VI was in some doubt in a number of places. The greatest danger would have been if the treaty had disappeared altogether, before Article VI had been complied with. It was still, as I understand it, intended to fill a gap, however long that continued. I cannot believe that the non-nuclear states believed that they would have had second-class status “forever and a day”, as the hymn puts it.
It is as though Parliament, when creating the offence of carrying an offensive weapon, had exempted those who were already carrying one. The preamble to the treaty exhibits a clear sense of urgency, with the words:
“Declaring their intention to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race”.
The non-nuclear states have for some years shown signs of impatience that the nuclear weapons states have exhibited no great anxiety to deliver on that part of the deal. Until now, as my noble friend Lord Drayson said, the United Kingdom could at least claim that it had substantially reduced its nuclear weaponry and was therefore moving towards disarmament, but to make a major investment in replacing Trident would send a clear signal that we see the treaty, with its class distinction, not as an interim arrangement but as, at best, indefinite and, at worst, permanent.
I had hoped to respond to my noble friend Lord Foulkes’s mistaken view, as I believe it to be, that there has been no ruling on the legitimacy of nuclear weapons. I fear that he and I will have to decide that over a drink later, because time is against me.
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I do not believe that anyone is going to emulate this country, whatever it does, purely because we have taken a particular view. I do believe that many people and many states have looked to this country because of its leadership again and again in these matters and have regarded it as one of the great hopes for one day achieving total nuclear disarmament. That is the laurel that they bestow on the teams from this country. I believe that if the decision is taken in the way that the Government propose, there will be many very disappointed people out there.
6.31 pm
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: My Lords, my contribution will cover the future of the UK’s nuclear deterrent from the angle of considering the implications of the Government’s proposals, their preferred course of action, as set out in the White Paper, for the nuclear non-proliferation regime as a whole, and their compatibility with our commitments as a signatory and depository of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
My first point is that the non-proliferation treaty has turned out to be a far more durable and effective instrument of international law than was originally expected when it first entered into force some 40 years ago; it has worked very much in the national interest of this country. In place of the 20 to 30 nuclear weapons states predicted at that time, there are only eight or nine, depending on how you choose to score North Korea. They are the five countries which were nuclear weapons states and recognised as such when the treaty was signed, which are the five permanent members of the Security Council, and the three countries that never signed the non-proliferation treaty and are generally assumed to have nuclear weapons—India, Israel and Pakistan.
During those 40 years, it has proved possible to roll back nuclear weapons programmes in South Africa, Libya and Iraq, to persuade several countries formerly part of the Soviet Union to pass up the opportunity to retain nuclear weapons—Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine—and to persuade other countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, to forgo nuclear research programmes which could have had weapons implications.
My second point cuts right across the first: the non-proliferation treaty regime is now under greater threat than it has ever been before from a number of different angles, most obviously from North Korea’s defiance of its treaty obligations and from Iran’s refusal, so far, to take the necessary steps to convince the international community that its clandestine uranium enrichment and other activities are not designed to provide a short cut to a weapons programme.
It is also under threat from tensions arising out of the existence of the three non-signatory de facto possessors of nuclear weapons: India, because of the not very satisfactory bilateral agreement entered into by the US last year; Pakistan, because of the supposedly freelance activities of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan; and Israel, because of the ever worsening situation in the Middle East. Then there is the failure
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It is the last of those three shortcomings which is most germane to our debate today. To what extent can the Government's proposals be considered as conforming to the commitments that we gave? Clearly, the reduction in the ceiling on the number of warheads, from 200 to 160, can be presented as progress towards nuclear disarmament, but could we not manage to maintain deterrence at a lower level of warheads than that? The same point could be made if there were to be a reduction in the submarine fleet from four to three, but that is not certain. It should surely become so, especially since the hair-trigger standby arrangements needed during the Cold War are no longer justifiable. What is less easy to defend is deciding on Trident replacement earlier than is strictly speaking necessary, at a time of great fragility for the NPT regime as a whole.
Britain's interest in and obligations towards the non-proliferation treaty do not stop with the future of its own nuclear deterrent; they extend to reversing recent trends towards a weakening and perhaps even a collapse of that regime. That trend was most evident in 2005, when two attempts to strengthen the regime led to deadlock both at the NPT Review Conference in May and at the UN summit in September.
For that trend to be reversed, the following six steps need to be taken as a matter of urgency. First, there needs to be strong renewed pressure to bring into effect the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. That will mean persuading the United States to look again at its refusal to ratify the treaty. Secondly, all the recognised nuclear-weapons states should resume implementation of the 13 steps to which they committed themselves in 2000. Thirdly, negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty should be engaged in and brought to an early successful conclusion.
Fourthly, all countries with safeguard agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency should accept and ratify the agency’s additional protocol. If, within a certain period, that is not done, the Security Council should adopt a Chapter VII resolution making that a mandatory requirement. Fifthly, negotiations at the IAEA to establish an internationally guaranteed system for the supply of enriched uranium and spent fuel reprocessing available to all civil nuclear users whose safeguards are in good standing should be completed in 2007. That should be matched by a voluntary and possibly time-limited moratorium on the construction of further enrichment and reprocessing facilities. Sixthly, it should be made clear that the establishment of nuclear weapons-free zones—in the Middle East, in particular—remains an integral part of any peace process.
It is evident that those six steps would not of themselves present solutions to the hard cases of North Korea and Iran but they would greatly increase the pressure all round on those two countries to come into line with the requests made of them by the Security Council. In any event, the fragility of the
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As for the two hard cases of North Korea and Iran, we must recognise that Britain and its European partners have a less prominent role to play in the former than the latter. The six-nation group dealing with the North Korean issue clearly needs to remain the main focus of international diplomacy and those outside that group need to give the process strong support. On Iran, we are, with our EU partners, a member of the core group handling the matter. Currently there is a stand-off, with no talks let alone negotiations taking place.
The sanctions decided by the Security Council are likely soon to come into effect, justifiably so if Iran makes no move to comply with the requests put to it unanimously by the Security Council. But should we not then seek to resume dialogue with Iran without making any preconditions? Should we not also be telling our US partners that the discrepancy between their willingness to talk bilaterally and without preconditions to North Korea and their refusal to do so with Iran is increasingly difficult to justify and defend, whatever one may think of the policies of the Iranian Government?
We must ask ourselves one question that relates directly to today’s debate: does Britain's decision on Trident make it more difficult to handle the cases of North Korea and Iran? Or, to put it another way, would our abandoning Trident be likely to provide effective leverage on those two countries? I think that the answer is no to both questions. Neither country is motivated to any significant extent by Britain's nuclear status, which both accepted when they signed the non-proliferation treaty. Neither, unfortunately, would be likely to be swayed by a unilateral decision on our part to abandon that status.
I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate in his winding-up speech whether the Government support the broad ideas and the six steps that I have proposed, or some variant of them. If they support such an approach, would it not be timely for either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary at an early date to set out in a public speech the British Government’s overall position on nuclear non-proliferation and thus to make clear that, in taking this decision on Trident, they intend not only to continue to fulfil the commitment to move towards nuclear disarmament but to step up their effective support for strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation treaty regime? Would it not also be timely for similar support to be forthcoming from this year’s G8 summit in Germany, and for the British Government to take an early initiative to bring that about?
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The problem with the nuclear non-proliferation issue is that it is complex, technical and poorly understood. Yet few areas of policy are more vital to peace and security in the 21st century. Surely it is high time that political leaders moved it higher up their common agenda and explained it to their electorates in terms more easily understood than those hitherto employed. The two-minutes-forward tick of the Doomsday clock may be a crude way of doing that, but it points the way towards greater urgency and a clearer understanding of what is at stake.
6.41 pm
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: My Lords, I start by taking this opportunity to remind the House of an incident in 1954, when the effects of Hiroshima still reverberated around the world, the memory of it still close, and the Cold War was becoming more fraught. Bertrand Russell contacted Albert Einstein, and through that contact initiated what became known as the Russell-Einstein manifesto. It was a call to scientists, whose discipline had created the nuclear bomb, to lead the way in preventing nuclear war.
However, that call reached far beyond the scientific community. It was more than a commitment to abolish nuclear weapons. The manifesto recognised that the world was a dangerous place, with real potential for conflict around every corner. It recognised the tremendous destructive powers of these new weapons of mass destruction and the appalling and lasting effects of large amounts of radiation. It put the question, “Shall we put an end to the human race or shall mankind renounce war?”. It was really an urgent call to the inhabitants of this globe of ours to recognise that this new capacity for destruction meant that war should become unthinkable. It was a call for a world based on law, consent and new multinational methods of conflict resolution. It was a call for the reinforcement of the new United Nations Security Council and for international treaties, and it is as relevant today as it was then.
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