Strategic Defence and Security Review

I think it would do no harm at all for the Prime Minister to make a further statement. He has always been unambiguous about this in the past and he was unambiguous about it when he was seeking the leadership of the party. It was a specific issue about which I asked him personally when I was reflecting on who to support and he was very firm in his commitment to the continuation of the nuclear deterrent. I am not quite sure what actually happened with the generation of this story. We have heard from the Armed Forces Minister that, as far as he knows, it had nothing to do with anyone employed by the Government. On the other hand, the BBC says it got its story from ““Government sources””. Those two statements are hard to reconcile. It is possible that someone somewhere on the press side in government thought they would take a punt at it, or perhaps someone thought they would fly a kite. The idea of flying a kite would be to say, ““Well, let us see if we can shift this decision a little and see what sort of a reaction it gets.”” I hope that the reaction this has got so far—notably from my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) in his excellent interview on the ““Today”” programme this morning and to some extent, I hope, from the contributions I have made in the Chamber today—has been sufficient to send a message to anyone anywhere in government that if they think that Conservative Members who have devoted their political lives to the protection, the maintenance, the justification and the support for a strategic nuclear deterrent would be prepared to play back-somersaults on an issue of this sort, they have got another think coming. This is not going to happen. One of the advantages of my having been able to campaign for 28 or 29 years on the same subject both outside and inside Parliament is that I have seen these things happen over and over again. It may be that some bright spark in the coalition thought that it would be a good idea if we could just shift the particular decision from one side of the next general election to the other, it would postpone some potential fissure between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats within that coalition. Let me assure anyone who holds that view that, on the contrary, any such move to delay will fuel the very divisions and uncertainty that people wish to avoid. I have been here before, on an international scale. I remember when the decision was made in 1979 to deploy the cruise and Pershing II missiles in five NATO countries to counter the SS-20 deployments by the Soviet Union from 1977. However, there was a fatal flaw in what was done. It was announced in December 1979 that the deployment would take place, but it was not actually due to take place until November 1983, which was when the cruise missiles came in. That reopened the whole controversy, and gave new life to those who always oppose a nuclear deterrent or deployment. It was a fatal mistake. Anyone who makes a decision on a matter of this sort must make it in principle. We made it in principle, and we made it in principle in 2007. Our attention has been drawn to some small print. We have been told that if we look at the coalition agreement, we will see that the deterrent will be replaced, and that it will be replaced on the basis of value-for-money assessments. Hon. Members will have heard me ask the Armed Forces Minister whether that could possibly be interpreted as meaning that the deterrent should not go ahead at all. He seemed to say that that could not be the case, but there is a problem. If we put off the decision about the main gate, we will reach a point at which, if it were decided not to proceed through the main gate with a replacement of Trident, the only conceivable alternative would be the one that we hear time and again from the Liberal Democrats: cruise missiles on Astute class submarines. That whole programme would have to be designed right from the beginning, and there would be no way of preventing a fatal gap which would ensure that by the time the programme had been designed, there would be no submarine-building capacity left at Barrow-in-Furness. I see the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) nodding in agreement. I have seen these tricks played over and over again. People are unwilling to say that they want to get rid of the deterrent because they know that, politically speaking, that would be suicide, so they try to find indirect means of scuppering it. We will not fall for that sort of trickery.