Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the compatibility of the Government’s decision to move to an overall nuclear weapon stockpile of no more than 260 warheads with trends away from conventional warfare towards cyber warfare.

The UK's independent, minimum credible, nuclear deterrent exists to deter the most extreme threats to our national security and way of life, which cannot be deterred by other means. These threats have not gone away with the emergence of cyberspace as a new sphere in which to conduct hostile or disruptive activities, and the nuclear deterrent remains essential in order to guarantee our security, and that of our NATO Allies. Setting a new warhead stockpile ceiling of 260 will allow the UK to maintain the minimum destructive power required to guarantee that the UK's nuclear deterrent remains credible and effective against the full range of state nuclear threats from any direction.