Speech by Robert Key MP
Member of Synod for Salisbury Diocese

I welcome the Bishop of Southwark’s motion and I will vote for it.

The Government took its decisions on the future of Trident last year and now seeks the agreement of Parliament and people. Some consultation!

The debate on the nuclear deterrent has not been rushed. It has been continuous since 1956 when we acquired it. Retention was in Labour’s 2005 manifesto. And in March last year the Defence Select Committee, of which I am a member, launched the first of three enquiries.

The response to our Committee from the Mission and Public Affairs Council was right to express serious questions about whether, post-Cold War, nuclear deterrence still works. That response will be quoted in our third and final Report to Parliament – which we will finalise tomorrow and publish next week, twelve months after our inquiry began. Hundreds of pages of evidence have been submitted to us. We have interrogated dozens of witnesses in public. All of this will be published. Most of it is already available on our website.

The Government refused to participate in the Defence Committee’s first Report on the Strategic Concept, published in June 2006. They failed to consider publicly the threats the UK faces today and how those threats may evolve in future.

Our second Report, published last December, examined the consequences of abandoning the nuclear deterrent on the manufacturing and skills base of the UK – and on the many thousands of families who would be directly affected. We concluded that industrial and social consequences should not be the main factor in the decision on the future of Trident.

Our Third Report, on the White Paper itself, has looked at the timing of decisions, the scale of our deterrent, legal and treaty aspects and deterrent options and costs.

The motion calls on Christian people to make an informed contribution in the light of Christian teaching about Just War. Personally, I have spent the past year considering our work in that light. I have revisited Bishop John Baker’s 1982 Report on ‘The Church and the Bomb’, which resulted from a Synod resolution of July 1979.

Today’s motion draws attention to international law and the ethical principles underpinning them. From the evidence of our distinguished witnesses to the Defence Committee, I conclude that replacement of the submarines, the missiles and the nuclear warheads would be legal. Contentious, yes. But as Professor Sands told us, speaking of the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion in 1996, “It plainly left open the possibility that certain uses of nuclear weapons could indeed be lawful”.

Whilst I accept that the Government’s cut of 20% in the number of operationally available warheads is concordant with our obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, for me it is not sufficient. The Government has missed this opportunity to take a lead with a serious non-proliferation strategy.

Today’s motion recognises the fundamental responsibility of the Government to provide for the security of the country. That introduces another dimension altogether. Our witnesses accepted that ultimately, decisions on the future of our deterrent are political, not legal. Nuclear weapons are more of a political weapon than a military one.

I applaud the lead given by The Archbishop of Canterbury who teaches us that nuclear weapons are theologically and morally unacceptable. Christian teaching about war and weapons must be heard. The Church of England has a particular duty, as the Established Church, to inform Parliament and Government about the moral and ethical dimensions of public policy. However, as ‘The Church and the Bomb’ said, “No policy is free from risk, either for one’s own country or for others. In such circumstances it would be as stupid and arrogant to claim that any answer was obviously right as it would be manifestly unjust to impugn the moral or intellectual integrity of those who are led to a different conclusion from one’s own”.

Having talked to a Royal Navy man on a nuclear submarine who would actually press the red button on orders ultimately from the Prime Minister, I am not prepared to say that he or any members of HM Forces or their families are wrong to obey orders. They are men and women of integrity and judgment – a lot of them good Christians - who would not be serving in our armed forces if they thought they were accomplices to illegality and evil.

Morality is not the exclusive preserve of protestors outside the gates of Parliament or 10 Downing Street – nor outside the gates of Faslane, Devonport or Aldermaston. Most people, including most Christians, reject the pacifist morality that says it would be better to be subjugated by superior military power and lose our freedoms than to possess nuclear weapons, on the grounds that no dictatorship lasts for ever and our moral judgment would be intact even if we were in chains or dead.

There is no evidence at this time of nuclear proliferation and global terrorism, that disarmament by the UK would have the slightest influence on people who wish us harm.

I was elected to Parliament to represent 118,000 people, many thousands of them in uniform or working as civilians in the Ministry of Defence. Members of Parliament will have to decide on the balance of moral arguments. I will not risk the security and freedom of my constituents and that of our nation by voting to abandon our nuclear deterrent. But I will vote for this motion which is accurate, true and justified.

The Christian community in the West would do well to remember that what we are defending is not, currently, our territory from physical invasion. What we are debating is the threat to our Western tradition of culture, civilisation and democracy – at whose very heart and core is Christianity. What is at stake is the proportionate force we should possess to defend those values of humanity, well-being, tolerance, freedom of worship, justice, the rule of law and freedom itself.

Robert Key MP