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Speech in Scottish Parliament Alasdair Morgan

Alasdair Morgan (South of Scotland) (SNP): It strikes me that the length of the Labour amendment is in proportion to Labour's embarrassment on the issue. I congratulate Phil Gallie on his honesty—at least the Tories do not hide behind half a page of verbiage.

During the cold war, there were two positions—pro-nuclear, because nuclear weapons were a deterrent, and anti-nuclear, for all the reasons that Roseanna Cunningham has laid out. It is not provable which theory was right, although Phil Gallie thinks that it is. Those of us who were teenagers during the Cuban missile crisis remember spending an anxious couple of days waiting to find out which theory was right. However, at least during the cold war our conditions for using the deterrent were clear—once the Russian tanks crossed the West German border, the clock had begun to tick. Now they are not clear. The Trident boats still patrol the oceans, although we are told that launch directions are not programmed into them. As Mike Rumbles asked, when would we use them? Whom do they deter by sailing the oceans? No one dares say.

We are informed that we are in the midst of a war on terror, but what act of terrorism has Trident ever stopped or will it ever stop? The previous deterrent strategy was dependent on rationality—the idea that both we and the Soviets would act rationally. However, even if nuclear weapons could ever work as a deterrent, they do not work with those who do not act rationally, such as rogue states. When did North Korea last act rationally? Terrorists who obtain nuclear weapons—suicide bombers writ large—will not act rationally. The deterrent argument simply does not work for the most likely source of a nuclear attack in this day and age.

Faced with that unpalatable fact, the Government must come up with another argument to justify spending £25 billion on replacing Trident. As the First Minister said at First Minister's question time a couple of weeks ago, Trident is now a negotiating tool. If it were brand spanking

new, were just out of the showroom and had a lifetime of 30 years in front of it, one might be able to argue—although I would not agree—that it could be used in negotiations. However, it is not—it is obsolescent. The submarines are almost past the end of their useful life. If we keep Trident, it will have to be replaced and the decision to replace it will have to be taken this year, because of the lead time for such orders. If members were on the other side of putative negotiations and knew that their opponent's bargaining chips were literally wasting away on the table in front of them, what would they do? They would sit tight and call their opponent's bluff. They would tell them to spend £25 billion on renewing their deterrent—and defence programmes never come in on budget—before agreeing to negotiate. Obsolescent Trident is not a negotiating tool.