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Speech in Westminster Parliament Katy Clark |
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| 14 March 2007 | ||
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Ms Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab): It is with great pleasure that I say that I—along with, I suspect, several other Scottish Labour MPs—will vote against Trident’s replacement this evening. I would vote against Trident’s replacement wherever in the United Kingdom it was based, but the reality is that it is based in the west of Scotland and for many decades vast majorities of people in Scotland have made it clear that they oppose nuclear weapons being based in Scotland. I think that that is because they, perhaps more than people in any other part of Britain, are very aware of what those weapons represent. They are weapons of mass destruction that have been designed to target civilian communities and to maximise death and suffering. We know what the outcome of the use of a nuclear weapon is; we learned that in Hiroshima. The only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons is the United States of America. I believe that the primary function of this debate should be to encourage us to do everything we can to make sure that such weapons are never used again. One of the most important things that we must do to make sure that they are never used again is to make sure that as few of them as possible exist in the world and that as few countries as possible have them. If today we vote for Trident renewal, that must be a breach of the non-proliferation treaty. We are talking about having 17 years of development of a new nuclear weapon system at, we understand, a cost of more than £20 billion. That is to develop a new and more sophisticated form of weapons of mass destruction. That is a very serious matter for this House to agree to. If we decide to go ahead with Trident renewal today, we will send the wrong signal to those countries that currently do not have nuclear weapons. What we will be saying to them is that a country such as Britain, which is stable and powerful and the fourth richest country in the world, needs nuclear weapons for our defence. If we need them, we must agree that other countries might also need them. I welcome the fact that we are having this debate. This is the first time that the Members of the House of Commons have had the opportunity to take part in a debate before such a decision is taken. The Government should be congratulated on that. It is partly because of the strength of feeling on the Labour Benches— |