Defence: Continuous At-Sea Deterrent — House of Lords, 2016-07-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Frank Ashcroft Judd (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, back in the mid-1970s, when we had such people in government, I was the Minister responsible for the Navy. I should like to take the opportunity of this debate to put on record how, even then, in the much earlier years of nuclear submarines, I formed the highest respect for the professionalism and dedication of those who were manning those submarines. When we remember the ensuing years, we owe those people a great tribute The noble Lord, Lord King, reminded us that we have just been commemorating the Battle of the Somme. We have also just been remembering Hiroshima and what it meant in terms of human destruction and suffering. At that time, those who took their challenges seriously—as with the challenges of 1945—saw for the first time the evidence of the concentration camps in Europe. That is why they dedicated themselves to building institutions which would enable us to have a world in which those things could never happen again. The United Nations was one, NATO was another—look what it has achieved on our own doorstep over all those years—and there were others as well. A few years later, we began to realise that if we were to have a peaceful world, we would need to take our contribution to that world seriously, which is why we began to build into our system of government overseas development as a priority. The Government deserve congratulations on the way they have pursued that with rigour and determination I admire President Obama for many things, but one of them is that he keeps reminding us that we must not stop dreaming of a world without nuclear weapons. In this kind of debate I always worry a little that we are settling almost as an end in itself for a way of managing the realities of the situation we have rather than saying, "How can we still, in spite of all the difficulties, keep striving for a different kind of world?". Historians 100 or 200 years hence may have a lot to say about a time when we settled for saying that the only way we could keep existing with any self-assurance was by mutual threat of mutual annihilation. That is not a very satisfactory comment on the advance of human society. However, that is the case, and we have to live with the reality that the United States has been a great partner with us in our enterprises, but Russia is there—and in a form we would prefer it were not—as is North Korea. China is becoming increasingly powerful, and there are others We cannot push these things away—they are there. Therefore, in the future that confronts us we have to have a means by which it becomes unthinkable for Governments of other countries to consider deploying nuclear weapons because of the consequences for them. I am not happy about that—I am extremely unhappy that we have to settle for this situation, but that is the reality of the situation which confronts us Finally, I am glad that one of the things that has been raised in this debate—would that it had not been necessary to do so—is the issue of terrorism. That is another reality with which we will have to live for a long time. We have to be absolutely certain that with our defence system and defence budget we produce systems that are relevant to the threat of terrorism. I am concerned in this situation in which such a high proportion of the defence budget is spent on the renewal of the deterrent when we know—Chilcot said it—that our forces are overstretched and are not properly equipped in the real situations which we meet every day. The issue of renewing our deterrent therefore raises immense questions about how far we are properly financing the rest of the defence budget. However, it also means that we have to be very certain that the deterrent in the form in which we are pursuing it will be the most effective protection in the years ahead That is why my noble friend Lord Robertson was absolutely right: it is disgraceful that we are having this debate late in the evening, with six minutes—I am afraid that I am already on seven—to speak on an issue which the Minister himself thinks is profoundly important. There are masses of implications involved in this decision. We should have had a White Paper and proper evidence put before us. How far have the Government really thought through the dangers for our nuclear maritime defence future, because a lot of serious people are questioning whether it will be quite as secure and immune as it should be? Those arguments may well be being answered but not with proper information made available as well as evidence of the Government’s consideration. It really is disgraceful that we are having this debate in this form tonight.