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Speech in Scottish Parliament Mike Rumbles |
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| 21 December 2006 | ||
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Mike Rumbles (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD): It has been a short but interesting debate in which many points have been covered. I want to address those that were made in two or three speeches. First, Maureen Macmillan said that she is against nuclear weapons. However, her amendment bears no relation to what her party leader in the Scottish Parliament wants to do or to what her party leader in London wants to do. Christine May had a go at the Liberal Democrats, following an excellent speech from my colleague Jim Wallace. The Liberal Democrats take a highly measured approach: we do not support a headlong rush into an unnecessary decision to spend up to £25 billion—a vast amount of money—on a replacement system, when Christine May's Labour colleagues on the House of Commons Defence Committee say that no decision needs to be taken for up to another seven years. Why is the Prime Minister in such a rush? We all know the answer to that question. I am not surprised about the Tories' position, which Phil Gallie outlined in his speech. He said that he believed the Prime Minister over the Iraq war, but on several occasions he has told Parliament that he was wrong to do so. Now he says that the Prime Minister is right in what he says in the white paper, but could not Tony Blair be wrong again? On nuclear weapons, the Tory party is renowned for its deference and now its irrelevance. Lord James Douglas-Hamilton (Lothians) (Con): Is the member aware that at one time Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Reid were unilateral disarmers? That means that at one stage of their lives they must have been on the right side. Mike Rumbles: That is an interesting observation. Lord James Douglas-Hamilton is absolutely right—they probably were on the right side at one stage of their lives. I want to focus on our amendment, which we lodged because Liberal Democrats north and south of the border have a long-standing commitment to multilateral elimination of nuclear weapons, but also to retaining the UK's current nuclear deterrent until such progress has been made. Although the decision on the replacement of the Trident system is, as we all know, reserved to Westminster, the Liberal Democrats believe that it is vital that Scotland's voice, through the Scottish Parliament, be heard in the debate. Successive UK Governments—Tory then Labour—have made little progress on nuclear disarmament. Indeed, the failure earlier this year to make any meaningful progress on disarmament of both the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference and the United Nations summit has been hugely disappointing. I hope that at decision time at 5 o'clock all of us in the Scottish Parliament can speak with one voice and send a clear message to our colleagues in the House of Commons that we reject the UK Government's case, and that we urge MPs to vote against the proposals in the Government's white paper when they make their decision next March. I encourage MSPs from all parties to unite behind the Liberal Democrats' amendment and to send a clear message to the UK Government from the people of Scotland. |