PRESIDENT OBAMA, NATIONAL SECURITY AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS

That this House agrees with the analysis of US President Obama in his address to United States Military Cadets at the West Point Military Academy in New York on 1 December 2009 when he said that the US would have to take away the tools of mass destruction and that waswhy he had made it a central pillar of his foreign policy to secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists, to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to pursue the goal of a world without them, because every nation had to understand that true security would never come from an endless race for ever more destructive weapons but that it would come for those who rejected them; believes that this wise judgement applies equally to the UK, and therefore calls on the Government to abandon forthwith all current efforts towards replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system; notes that at a time when there is pressure on the public finances, the money thus saved could be redeployed to create jobs, education, housing, sustainable energy technologies such as wave power generators, and medical research in the civilian sector; and, in order to enhance the UK's influence at the forthcoming Review Conference of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to be held at the United Nations in New York in May 2010, calls on the Government to place into international nuclear disarmament negotiations the existing Trident nuclear weapons system in order to achieve true security for the UK.