§ 9. Ms Oona King (Bethnal Green and Bow)What steps the Government are taking to promote global nuclear disarmament. [65532]
§ The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. George Robertson)We continue to consider further ways in which to achieve progress towards our goal of the global elimination of nuclear weapons, building on the steps we have taken in the strategic defence review. We keep closely in mind the commitment by the nuclear weapon states to work together for the success of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review process and related issues. I particularly welcome the reopening in Geneva last week of international negotiations on a treaty banning the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons.
§ Ms KingWill my right hon. Friend confirm that, as a result of changes announced under the strategic defence review, Britain will not deploy any more warheads on Trident than were deployed on Polaris when it first entered service? Will he also confirm that more needs to be done urgently to promote multilateral nuclear disarmament, and state what further steps the Government are taking to achieve that end?
§ Mr. RobertsonI am grateful to my hon. Friend for her commendation of what we have done under the strategic defence review. By reducing the number of warheads per submarine to no more than under Polaris, we have taken a significant step forward, as that is a reduction of 20 per cent. in the number of warheads per submarine. In addition, we have reduced our stockpiles by one third.
We are taking major steps forward, to such an extent that the United Nations Secretary General said that he welcomed the decisions on nuclear warheads that we took under the strategic review. He said:
This is an important step towards the general disarmament envisaged in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and therefore a significant strengthening of that Treaty at a time when developments elsewhere are subjecting it to considerable strain.I assure my hon. Friend that our commitment, together with that of many other nations, to global nuclear disarmament is real. The changes made under the strategic defence review, much of which has not received the favourable press attention in this country that it deserved, will take us a long way toward achieving that aim.
§ Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East)I congratulate the Secretary of State on having at last confirmed that the actual reduction in the number of warheads per submarine is 20 per cent., not 50 per cent. as has sometimes been glibly claimed in the past. Will he acknowledge that, in 1972, the world thought that it had achieved the global abolition of germ warfare and biological weapons, but that, 20 years later, President Yeltsin admitted that, in fact, the Russians had reintensified their biological warfare programmes after that treaty? In the unlikely event of the right hon. Gentleman ever managing to achieve global nuclear disarmament, will he have done anything more than make the world safe once more for all-out conventional warfare between major powers, instead of keeping nuclear weapons where they belong, in the hands of democratic powers and used to deter dictators?
§ Mr. RobertsonThe hon. Gentleman has a weird sense of geopolitics if he believes that all nuclear weapons are 15 currently in the sort of hands that he describes. There is nothing wrong with the global objective, to which the Government are committed, of eliminating nuclear weapons on a multilateral basis. Of course, appropriate verification regimes have to be put in place to ensure that those who say that they taking action, whether in that or other areas, are doing so. That is why we have set in motion work at Aldermaston to develop United Kingdom expertise in the verification of the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. That will ensure that, when the time comes for us to enter negotiations, we shall have a national verification capability.