Nuclear Weapons (International Relations Committee Report)

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall begin with a little bit of good news. My noble friend Lord Judd is sitting up, cheerful and eager to get back to the House as soon as possible. He will be sorely missed in this debate.

I too welcome this excellent report and certainly the introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. The fact is that we are now living in a world dangerously close to an era without arms control. The report’s key recommendation is to encourage greater dialogue between all the nuclear possessor states on the nuclear risk to reduce global tensions. I like the analogy of a watched pot boiling over, which I think is what this debate is fundamentally about.

What are the mechanisms to do this? As the report and the Government’s response to it acknowledge, the non-proliferation treaty has been hugely successful over the past 50 years. Of the 189 countries that have signed up to it since 1970, only one non-nuclear signatory, North Korea, has developed a deliverable nuclear weapon. The treaty remains critical to UK security and to the rules-based international order as a whole. It was of course a Labour Government who signed it in 1968 and, since 1970, as we have heard, review conferences have been held every five years to pursue an incremental approach to nuclear disarmament through article 6 of the treaty. The latest preparatory committee for the 2020 review took place in April, and there we saw 191 parties to the treaty setting out their assessments of how it has been implemented and what we should do collectively to strengthen it further over the next five years. In the excellent briefing provided by the Library, I read the blog by Aidan Liddle, the ambassador and permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament. His clear message is that many countries want to see more progress on disarmament, and another thing he referred to was the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, mandated by the 1995 conference.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, highlighted that the Government said in their response that they remain committed to the establishment in the Middle East of a zone free of nuclear and all other weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. What are the Government doing about that? What is their strategy? We need to know more about it. The committee argued that the UK should use its chairmanship of the P5 to encourage a more constructive tone and approach from nuclear weapon states as we move towards the 2020 review conference. It called on the Government to set out a clear vision for this. What are the Government working on in preparing for this? Will they hold consultations and will they publish a strategy ahead of the conference so that parliamentarians can engage in the dialogue and the debate? Who will attend the conference and what level of representation will there be? As we heard, new technologies are being developed that may not come within the scope of existing arms control treaties. The Government’s response suggests that we will work with our allies to consider how they might be brought within the scope of existing and new arms control agreements, and that the review conference provides another opportunity to do so. Will the Government add, for example, lethal autonomous weapons to the agenda for the 2020 review conference? The report calls on the Government to review the resilience of the UK’s nuclear deterrent against the threat of cyberattacks and new technologies, as highlighted by my noble friend. Will cybersecurity receive an increase in funding in this year’s spending review? We must surely make it a priority when we have understood the threats.

In the past the UK has been seen as one of the more progressive nuclear states, leading the way in advocating diplomatic, technological and financial policies to pursue nuclear disarmament. The P5 process set up in 2008 under Labour was the first forum between the P5 to specifically discuss matters surrounding nuclear disarmament. But where are the initiatives by this Government to maintain the commitments and pathways set out in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? The key to this process, as reflected in noble Lords’ report, has to be a much stronger level of communication and dialogue.

I hope we will hear in the Minister’s response tonight exactly how the Government will engage, particularly with the US President’s reviews of new START and the European nuclear weapons treaties. How will we engage and communicate across the P5? How do we reinvigorate the process to avoid the threats we have heard identified in your Lordships’ report? How do we reduce tensions and the threat that nuclear weapons pose?

The Government’s response said that,

“the best way to achieve our long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons is through gradual multilateral disarmament, negotiated using a step-by-step approach within existing frameworks and taking into account current and future security risks”.

Who can disagree? But do we not want a bit more evidence about how we are making progress and what steps we are taking to move things along? The evidence in your Lordships’ committee is the complete opposite: the situation is deteriorating. We are moving to a world in which we will not have agreements containing the growth of nuclear weapons.

Finally, on Iran, it is right that noble Lords have highlighted this as another threat to non-proliferation in a region where we hope we can remove all weapons of mass destruction. The government response says the Government,

“regrets the US decision to withdraw from the JCPoA and re-impose sanctions on Iran”,

despite no serious suggestion of non-compliance, as the noble Baroness highlighted. If we do this on one agreement, what impact will it have on the others? Of course, only last week Iran broke the limit on uranium enrichment in the nuclear deal, and there is a real threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. What recent conversations have the Government had with our European partners and the Iranian Government on this recent breach and the maintenance of the agreement? Does the Minister believe that President Trump has killed the Iran deal, or will we take further steps to ensure that it is properly protected?