FUTURE OF TRIDENT AND THE PROCESS OF GLOBAL NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

That this House welcomes the statement by Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry and George Schultz on the urgency of the need for a new global initiative to build a framework for a world free of the nuclear threat; agrees with their analysis that the end of the Cold War has rendered irrelevant the concept of mutually assured destruction; further agrees that reliance on nuclear weapons for the purposes of deterrence is increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective; welcomes their proposals for a US led international programme of nuclear stockpile reduction and other non-proliferation measures; believes that this proposal provides a unique opportunity for the UK Government to work jointly with the US administration in the cause of greater global security; and recommends that, pending the development of such an initiative, any decision on the renewal of the Trident fleet of nuclear submarines should be deferred.