I think the coalition had something to do with that. I warned David Cameron about that before we even went into that coalition.
The right hon. Member for Islington North accuses his own country of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and suggests that we are somehow escalating our numbers, but he does not even mention the fact that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) said, Russia has—what was it?—6,800 nuclear warheads. They are modernising every single weapons system that they have got. They are in breach of the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. That is escalation, and the right hon. Member for Islington North has nothing to say about that whatsoever.
We all know that the British people will support the United Kingdom’s continuous at-sea deterrent for as long as other nuclear weapons states are keeping their weapons and there are other proliferators around. We
just need to remind ourselves what extraordinarily good value the continuous at-sea deterrent system actually is. The Library produced a report last month, pointing out that the annual cost of our continuous at-sea deterrent is just 1% of the cost of social security and tax credits—just 1%. So the idea that this is a Rolls-Royce system that we cannot afford is mythical. Nothing could buy us the security and influence that the continuous at-sea deterrent gives us.
The doctrine of deterrence is just as valid as it ever was. Has the right hon. Member for Islington North ever asked himself why major state-on-state warfare stopped in 1945? Well, I can tell him why: it was because nuclear weapons were invented and that kind of warfare became too costly, too destructive, to contemplate. Does he want to go back to that world by getting rid of nuclear weapons altogether? I hope not.
We just need to remind ourselves that our continuous at-sea deterrent can attack any target at any time, so it is always ready to respond to threats. Its location is unknown so it cannot be pre-empted. It does not require to be deployed at a time of international tension and crisis. The technology is tried and tested. It is not in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty; it is completely compliant. It is a sovereign capability, which, if we had to use it, we would. No alternative system could possibly provide all these benefits at such good value, and that is why we should reaffirm our commitment to our nuclear deterrent.