Nuclear Deterrent

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nick Harvey]

The truth of the matter is that none of us knows. If we retain a nuclear deterrent of any description and any scale, it is an insurance policy against the unknown. I am saying that the current nuclear deterrent is scaled specifically to overcome the threat that we believed the Soviet Union posed in 1980. As we look to an unknown future over the course of this century, we have to decide what proportion of our defence spend and effort should go into this one part of our defence livery, and the opportunity cost of doing that.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we move to some form of cruise missile-based nuclear weapons system, that would be destabilising internationally and positively dangerous?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I am waiting for the Trident alternatives review, which is being conducted by the Cabinet Office and is looking at exactly those sorts of issues. When it reports, I look forward to coming back and debating them with the hon. Gentleman. As a considered study of exactly these sorts of issues is nearing its conclusion at the moment, the time to debate those details will be when the report has been published.

I want to look at the pressures that will face Defence Ministers in the years when the large capital expenditure that I have described would have to be spent. In the same period of time, we will have to put the joint strike fighter aircraft on to the two new aircraft carriers and build the Type 26 frigate. Whatever the next generation of remotely piloted air systems and whoever we do that with, it will fall in the same time frame. Bearing in mind that HMS Ocean is due to leave service in 2018, any future generation of amphibious shipping will have to be paid for in exactly that time frame; and whatever we equip the Army with for the 21st century—it has been the poor relation in the equipment budget for many years—and bearing in mind how little seems to be left of the original future rapid effect system, as conceived by the previous Government, again, it will fall in that time frame. If we decide to give the nuclear deterrent a bye and think it has some magic claim on the money, an opportunity cost will have to be paid across the rest of our defence systems.

I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) talking quite rightly about the part that Plymouth plays in the nuclear deterrent, but I put it to her and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) that if we commit all our money to one system, the opportunity cost will be felt above all else by the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy might fight—and win—to keep the nuclear deterrent on its current scale, but the price will be paid in the scale of the conventional surface Navy, which, in my view, is already trying to do far too much with far too little.

The UK has a sensible range of military capabilities at the moment, and with that we can take part in international operations. We have global interests and ambitions, and uniquely we have the will to use military power when we need to in pursuit of those interests. Ours is still the fourth largest defence budget in the world. Our place on the top table does not depend on our being a nuclear power; we are there in our own right, and besides which any change to the line-up of the UN Security Council would require the UK’s assent, which we could simply withhold.

We must make a contribution to disarmament. That is an obligation we have under the non-proliferation treaty. We must wait and see whether the Trident alternatives review can find another system that offers us a way of sustaining a credible deterrent. It would not have the same capability, but there might be a way of doing something at a lesser cost. We should keep an open mind about trying to do that.

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[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Reference was made earlier in the debate to the period of the Reagan-Gorbachev Administrations. General Secretary Gorbachev in the 1980s called for a nuclear-free world by 2000. Remember that? Of course, the Soviet Union ended and the world we live in, as many speakers have commented, is much more complicated now than it was at that time. None of us knows where we will be in 30 or 40 years, and the decisions that are to be taken make assumptions about a future that we cannot predict.

We have heard references in the debate also to the continuation of NATO. I am a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I have serious doubts whether in the next 20 or 30 years the United States will give Europe a global commitment of extended deterrence in the way it did at the height of the cold war.

Nobody has so far mentioned China in the debate. China is modernising its military assets significantly. It has nuclear weapons. At some point this century it will become a global power with projection all round the world, not just within its own coasts and the seas off its coasts.

If we are looking at the future of the world, I do not think any of us can be very confident about what the outcome will be. What we do know is that the non-proliferation regime is under serious threat, not just from countries such as North Korea, which have left the NPT, but from countries that are still within the NPT, such as Iran, and other countries that will follow any decision to weaponise a nuclear capability by the Iranians at some point. In 15 or 20 years’ time, there could be 10, 15 or 20 more countries with nuclear weapons. The world that we are going into requires international action. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) mentioned the Labour party’s policy review in 1989. I was the secretary of that review, which changed our policy to deal with the realities that we were confronting at that time rather than the debate that had gone on theologically in the past.

We now need to make renewed efforts, and I wish the Minister and shadow Front Benchers would talk a little more about what role we can play with our nuclear weapons in facilitating new international disarmament negotiations, because they are not happening now. Despite President Obama’s Prague speech in 2009, the vision of a nuclear-free world is blocked because the Russians are not interested so long as missile defence is on the agenda. There is the danger of a proliferation of warheads to overcome missile defence if it is ever deployed. I conclude there to give others a chance.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Mr Corbyn, I think you know that that is not a point of order either, particularly seeing as the Backbench Business Committee’s determination of business in the House is not a matter for the Chair. I am sure that when the Committee reads Hansard, it will take his remarks as an early bid, particularly if he has greater support for such a debate.

[Mike Gapes]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that the Government will publish—at least internally—and consider their review on the alternatives to Trident, perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who is in his place, will give the House a commitment that we will have the chance to debate the review in this House very soon.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Well, Mr Gapes, perhaps the Minister could do that, but I do not think he will. That is not a point of order. I would like to make progress with business, because I am sure there are not any other relevant or pertinent points of order to take this afternoon.