Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference 2026

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, we will always consider any suggestions, but let me be clear: we chair the P5 as part of the NPT. We are very proud to do that. We established the process. This country has as its goal a nuclear-free world, but we also recognise today’s strategic realities, and to meet these challenges, we have to take the action that we do. We are very proud to be part of the P5 and the NPT, but we also recognise in the strategic context that we are in that the nuclear deterrent and its modernisation are essential to our security and that of the global world.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

The Minister takes this extremely seriously, and so he should. Does he agree that the NPT review now faces the worst challenge in the 50 years since its inception in 1968? Will he assure us that our team, when we go into the review, will press on all three of the pillars he described extremely hard and bring home to people the extreme danger of smaller countries wanting to get in on the act, already applying to see whether they can break the existing five’s monopoly, which, of course, is broken a bit anyway, and bring to the public a much stronger understanding of the intense danger of the proliferation everywhere of nuclear bombs?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I strongly agree with the noble Lord’s analysis. The NPT is an essential cornerstone of global security. I suggest that in many ways it has been particularly successful. I was looking at the figures earlier on. In 1986, there were an estimated 70,300 nuclear warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and the most recent figure I could find was 12,241. Although there are challenges, as the noble Lord points out, we have managed in many ways to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to ensure that, as far as possible, the architecture of the post-war world remains the same. However, the noble Lord is right to point out the challenges, and this country, along with our allies and friends, will do all we can to ensure that the NPT remains successful and that all three pillars are pursued.