Nuclear proliferation
March 16, 2010This morning I spoke at the Royal Society headquarters in London about the enormous political challenge posed by nuclear proliferation. With me on the panel were Des Browne, former Secretary of State for Defence, and Baroness Shirley Williams, former Cabinet Minister and now adviser to the Prime Minister on proliferation issues. The session was chaired by Lord (Martin) Rees, President of the Royal Society, Astronomer Royal and Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at Cambridge. add to that an audience of senior scientists and nuclear policy experts and you can see why I found the meeting a bit daunting in prospect.
The conference had been organised by the Royal Society to mark the publication of its paper on what scientists can do to help address the challenge of nuclear proliferation. You can read that paper here.
I’d been asked to speak on how a Conservative government would address the isues of nuclear proliferation and multi-lateral disarmament. What’s encouraging is that there is now a great deal of cross-party agreement on these issues. There was little with which I disagreed in what either Des or Shirley said.
You can access my speech here: Nuclear Proliferation Speech at the Royal Society
A useful paper from the Royal Society and a very constructive speech from yourself, David.
I’m very pleased to hear that there is cross-party agreement on combatting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and I am pleased, too, that the Conservatives are willing to work towards the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
Should the Conservatives form the next government, I hope that the new Foreign Secretary will immediately attend the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York to show the UK’s concrete support for multilateral disarmament, and indicate that the UK would support a nuclear weapons convention which would eventually ban nuclear weapons.
Liam Fox has already promised a defence review, and this should be used to review the case for replacing Trident and examine the role and need for UK nuclear weapons looking into the future.