UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. As I pointed out earlier, Russia is also modernising its nuclear capability. It would be a dereliction of our duty, in terms of our responsibility for the safety and security of the British people, if we were to give up our nuclear deterrent.

We must send an unequivocal message to any adversary that the cost of an attack on our United Kingdom or our allies will always be far greater than anything it might hope to gain through such an attack. Only the retention of our own independent deterrent can do this. This Government will never endanger the security of our people and we will never hide behind the protection provided by others, while claiming the mistaken virtue of unilateral disarmament.

Let me turn to the question of our moral duty to lead nuclear disarmament. Stopping nuclear weapons being used globally is not achieved by giving them up unilaterally. It is achieved by working towards a multilateral process. That process is important and Britain could not be doing more to support this vital work. Britain is committed to creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons, in line with our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

I am going to make some more progress.

We play a leading role on disarmament verification, together with Norway and America. We will continue to press for key steps towards multilateral disarmament, including the entry into force of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and for successful negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty. Furthermore, we are committed to retaining the minimum amount of destructive power needed to deter any aggressor. We have cut our nuclear stockpiles by over half since their cold war peak in the late 1970s. Last year, we delivered on our commitment to reduce the number of deployed warheads on each submarine from 48 to 40. We will retain no more than 120 operationally available warheads and we will further reduce our stockpile of nuclear weapons to no more than 180 warheads by the middle of the next decade.

Britain has approximately 1% of the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world. For us to disarm unilaterally would not significantly change the calculations of other nuclear states, nor those seeking to acquire such weapons. To disarm unilaterally would not make us safer. Nor would it make the use of nuclear weapons less likely. In fact, it would have the opposite effect, because it would remove the deterrent that for 60 years has helped to stop others using nuclear weapons against us.

Our national interest is clear. Britain’s nuclear deterrent is an insurance policy we simply cannot do without. We cannot compromise on our national security. We cannot outsource the grave responsibility we shoulder for keeping our people safe and we cannot abandon our ultimate safeguard out of misplaced idealism. That would be a reckless gamble: a gamble that would enfeeble our allies and embolden our enemies; a gamble with the safety and security of families in Britain that we must never be prepared to take.

We have waited long enough. It is time to get on with building the next generation of our nuclear deterrent. It is time to take this essential decision to deter the most extreme threats to our society and preserve our way of life for generations to come. I commend this motion to the House.

European Council

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in doing that. I had the huge privilege of going aboard one of Her Majesty’s ships when it is was in Malta. It had recently been taking part in combating the people-smuggling operations and picking people up. It had saved literally thousands of lives, and we could see—whether it was the medical teams, the Royal Marines or the royal naval personnel—that there was huge pride in what they had done.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s tagging on of the events of recent days to a statement on international affairs reminds me of when one of his predecessors, Harold Macmillan, unsuccessfully tried to explain chaos in his own Treasury as “a little local difficulty”. Does the Prime Minister accept that, with the revelation that the Chancellor does not care about vulnerable people because there are not enough Tory voters among them, his own little local difficulty means that compassionate conservatism is completely dead?

[The Prime Minister]

If I had come to the House and not mentioned these issues, which has enabled colleagues on both sides of the House to question me about them, I think there would have been justifiable outcry, so I wanted to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to do so. When it comes to people casting their vote, we won the last election because we won the support of working people, and we did so because we were creating jobs, cutting taxes, reforming welfare, improving schools, investing in our country and making the economy stronger and our society fairer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. There is further to go, but the Government are investing more in mental health. We introduced the waiting times, most recently saying that young people suffering episodes of psychosis should be seen within two weeks. There is funding, there is parity of esteem, there is waiting time. There also needs to be a bigger culture change not just in the NHS but right across the public and private sectors, so that mental health conditions are given the attention they deserve.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Q6. From April, a woman who works full time stands to lose thousands of pounds in tax credits if she becomes pregnant with her first child. When will the Prime Minister stop attacking working people?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing for women like that is making sure that this year they can earn £11,000 without paying any income tax. If they are on low wages, if they are on the minimum wage, they will get a 7% pay increase because of the national living wage. For the first time, there will be 30 hours of free childcare for those people. That is what we are doing for hard-working people. Do we need to reform welfare? Yes, we do. If the hon. Gentleman had read the report into why his party lost the election—not the one it published, of course; the secret one we all read over the weekend—he would see that, by its endlessly arguing for higher and higher welfare, the British public rightly concluded that under Labour there would be higher and higher taxes.