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Speech in Scottish Parliament Roseanna Cunningham |
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| 21 December 2006 | ||
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Roseanna Cunningham (Perth) (SNP): It is less than three months since we last debated Trident in the Parliament. In September we were debating in anticipation of a Government decision on renewal. Today's debate is taking place in the context of a white paper that clearly signposts the Government's intentions and of the desperate need for a debate throughout the UK on the need for Trident to be replaced. None of the sentiments that I expressed in the debate on 28 September are inappropriate in this debate, so I hope that all members will take those comments as read. I endorse everything that Nicola Sturgeon said in her opening remarks, but I might have been slightly more scathing about what I see as an international example of men with mid-life crises worrying about whether theirs is bigger than the others'. Today I want to look at a slightly different issue. I hope that all members have read the most recent publication by Greenpeace, which makes a very telling point. It highlights the narrow definition of national security that is always referred to in debates such as this. Perhaps the concept of national security should be subjected to rather more detailed scrutiny than it is usually given. For various reasons, including the global stand-off between the west and the communist world and the various targeting strategies of the principal players, during the cold war it might have seemed obvious what national security meant for us, although I think that that was debatable even then. However, what does it mean now? No one can answer that question. In a much-publicised war on terror, it is not easy to see what the nuclear strategy is, other than to try to ensure that nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of those who may misuse them. That involves value judgments about which are right and proper regimes to have their fingers on the buttons and which are not, and cannot address the issue of the weapons' possible use by individuals or terrorist cells. Recently, debate has centred on what even some authorities in the United States argue is the major challenge to world security—the threat of climate change. How do either of the changed realities in which we live mesh with the intention to move to a new generation of nuclear weapons? How do either of them justify spending what on some estimates may amount to £76 billion, if they are not the basis of our definition of national security? The dangerous perception is that the continued brandishing of nuclear weapons will really be about access to resources in the future, with the rich west and its client states relying on such weapons as the big stick by which to ensure that scarce resources remain available to the west. What is happening in the middle east could be well described as oil wars, with the USA's main interest being in a continued supply of oil, instead of in addressing the issue of scarcity of non-renewable resources. In that context, nuclear weapons become a way of ignoring the reality of climate change or, at least, of allowing the west to ignore that reality. If we accept that climate change is a threat that we will all have to face, what are we doing to address it? We know that that will cost money. Why, at a time when we are facing a cost that we all recognise will need to be borne, do we appear to have up to £76 billion available for this dubious deterrent? Maureen Macmillan told us that the Labour Government is calling for a national debate, but she went on to express the view that that debate should take place within the walls of the House of Commons. I can tell her from experience that that kind of national debate is no debate at all. It is only right and proper that the Parliament should make a contribution to the debate and, more to the point, should encourage a debate throughout Scotland. Ultimately, members either believe that it is okay to have weapons of mass destruction or they do not. If they do not, they should vote with the SNP at 5 pm.
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