Liberal Democrats back Trident cut to kickstart disarmament

2.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Sat 3rd Mar 2007

A vote by Liberal Democrats for Britain to cut the number of Trident nuclear warheads to kickstart international nuclear disarmament has been welcomed by Liberal Democrats.

The decision was made at the party's spring conference earlier today when Liberal Democrats agreed to a policy of putting back a decision on the replacement of the Trident submarines until the middle of the next decade.

In 2010 there will be international talks aimed at reducing nuclear weapons. It is vital that these talks are a success. Failure could mean countries such as Iran pressing ahead with the development of their own nuclear weapons. Liberal Democrats believe that these talks need to be kickstarted and Britain should be willing to do this by scrapping half the Trident nuclear warheads Britain currently has.

We should then be willing to negotiate away the rest of the Trident system if other countries are prepared to do the same with their nuclear weapons. That is why Liberal Democrats in support the call to take a decision on whether or not to build new submarines to replace the current Trident fleet in the next decade, after the outcome of the talks in 2010 is known.

If the talks are a success, there will be no need to embark on the replacement of the submarines and no need to spend the billions of pounds of tax payers' money needed to pay for the replacement system.

The decision of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, backed by the Conservatives, to opt for new submarines now, sends the wrong signals to the 2010 talks. The decision could undermine the talks altogether.

The talks in 2010 will be held under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. These talks are held every five years but those carried out in 2005 were a failure caused largely by the Iraq war and the unwillingness of US President George Bush to ensure they succeeded.