Robert Key (Salisbury) (Con): At the height of the Second World War, my parents’ home in Plymouth was blitzed by the Nazi dictatorship with conventional weapons. In 1947, we moved to Salisbury, which was a garrison city. During my schooldays, I vividly remember the invasion of Hungary, the days of Checkpoint Charlie and the terror—always hanging over us—of the cold war, growing to the time of the Bay of Pigs. All that has conditioned the brief remarks I am about to make.

I want to address the issue of what we think we are deterring and what we think we are defending. However, it is important to recognise that the Government have taken an important step forward by holding the debate at all. On both sides, we have seen responsible government and responsible opposition operating in the best interests of our country.

We need a decision on the issue now. I stand by the three reports that the Defence Committee, of which I am a member, has taken a year to prepare. They lead me to make various conclusions. I regret that the Government did not participate in the Committee’s first report, because that meant they failed to consider publicly the threats the UK faces and how they might evolve in the future, which the House should consider.

Our second report considered the consequences for the UK manufacturing and skills base of abandoning the nuclear deterrent. We concluded that the industrial and social consequences should not be the main factor in the decision on the future of Trident. The third report, published last week, looked at the timing of the decisions on our deterrent, its scale and the legal and treaty aspects.

At present, I am the only Member of the House who is a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, and I think it is extremely important that we should listen to the message sent by the established Church. It is because it is the established Church that it should make its views clear. The Church of England did not simply say that it was opposed to any kind of nuclear deterrent. The Archbishop of Canterbury said:

“I believe that the least a Christian body ought to do in these circumstances is to issue the strongest possible warnings and discouragements to our Government.”

He made a strong moral case against nuclear weapons in general. Of course, his views are not unanimous. On 11 October, the Bishop of Liverpool said:

“Nuclear knowledge can’t be unlearnt, its evil genie of weaponry can’t be sucked back into the test tube. It’s a fact of the modern world, as factual as those sinister imaginations that can not only contemplate human terror but actually inflict it.”

The Bishop of Rochester, writing in The Sunday Telegraph under the heading “I believe in Trident, and using it if necessary”, said:

“The task of the Churches...is to resource the debate by setting out the moral criteria which need attention rather than trying to make Government policy from the sidelines.”

I concur absolutely. Last week, I took part in a debate in Synod where I made it clear that I believe we should proceed with Trident.

We need to consider that there will be new technologies in the future. There will be new weapons and they might be more morally acceptable, but it is important to recognise that morality is not the exclusive preserve of protesters, whether outside the gates of Parliament, hanging over the river, outside the gates of No. 10, or outside 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.

At this time of nuclear proliferation and global terrorism, there is no evidence that disarmament by the UK would have the slightest influence on people who wish us harm. I was elected to Parliament to represent about 118,000 people, many thousands of them in uniform or working as civilians in the Ministry of Defence. Tonight, all Members will have to decide on the balance of moral arguments, but I will not risk the security and freedom of my constituents and of our nation by voting not to renew a nuclear deterrent.

France has been much mentioned, which is important. Only three weeks ago, I was in Paris as a member of the Defence Committee. We listened and talked to representatives from the French Defence Ministry and the Assemblée Nationale. We were briefed by the President’s defence adviser in the Élysée and I raised various issues, including possible collaboration over nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. However, I have to tell the House that my impression was that the French were longing for us to give up our nuclear deterrent, and I cannot help recalling that the last time the destiny of the United Kingdom was in the hands of the French, William the Conqueror paid us a visit.

Finally, the community in the west needs to be quite clear what this is all about and what we are defending: not our territory from physical invasion, but our western tradition of culture, civilisation and democracy, at the heart of which is Christianity. What is at stake is the proportionate force that we should possess to defend those values of humanity, well-being, tolerance, freedom of worship for every religion, justice, the rule of law and freedom itself. Those are the issues that we are debating tonight and I am in no doubt at all that the risk should not be taken of abandoning the defence of those values.