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On 14 March 2007 voted against the Government motion which called for the renewal of Trident

Voted on 14 March 2006 against the Government motion, to replace Trident, and for a LibDem amendment to postpone the decision.

Told the Press and Journal
"This decision does not need to be taken now when the life of the existing nuclear submarines can easily be extended."

Replied to survey in November 2006 by saying "I am sceptical about the need for a decision on a replacing Trident to be made in this Parliament, and am curious as to why the Government has said this. The US has decided to keep its Trident systems going into 2040's and the UK doing likewise strikes me as both an option and likelihood. Until the Government comes forward with a plan for Trident replacement, the Liberal Democrats have no plan to change the policy on which we fought the last -and pervious-elections. Our manifesto last year re-iterated our long-standing commitment to work for the elimanation of nuclear weapons on a multi-lateral basis, whilst retaining the UK's current minium nuclear deterrent until substainal progresss has been made to this end.

To this end, in the aftermath of last year's failure of both the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review conference and the UN world summit to make any meaningful progress on disarmament, we are continuing to press the Government to initiate arms reduction talks. I will continue to press for a White paper to be published in order to facilitate a debate. As a party we are embarking on a detailed policy study examining both the problems of proliferation, and the criteria on which we will form a judgement about any replacement of Trident when it comes to vote on a government proposal."

In response to letters he links the future of British nuclear weapons with progress on multilateral disarmament. "For nuclear non-proliferation and weapons reduction to be achieved nuclear-armed countries such as Britain must be willing to participate in any disarmament process."