Key quotes: On Trident

Here are some of the key quotes from the House of Commons as MPs debated the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system. Scroll down for the most recent entries:

PRIME MINISTER TONY BLAIR

I believe it is important that we recognise that although it is impossible to predict the future, the one thing... that is certain is the unpredictability of it. For that reason, I think it is sensible we take this decision today. It really is absurd to say that we can somehow put off the question of whether we take a decision now for this concept and design phase. Obviously we have to take the advice of the experts, the director general who is in charge of this in the MoD, who say to us it's a 17-year programme and has to begin now if we want to maintain the nuclear deterrent. We can't put this decision off. We have to take it now.

CONSERVATIVE LEADER DAVID CAMERON

We are discussing this now because the system could take around 17 years to put in place - so the timing is right, the legality is clear and maintaining the deterrent is in our national interest. Because you have the support of the Conservative party we can work together in the national interest. Will you tell us clearly that tonight's vote is THE vote and there's no going back after tonight's vote? Will you also stand by your policy and not appease those in your own party, or the Liberal Democrats, who simply want to run away from a tough decision?

LIB DEM LEADER SIR MENZIES CAMPBELL

I can't help remembering the last time the Tory leader and you [Mr Blair] voted together in the same lobby on an issue of national interest was over Iraq and it hasn't proved a very comforting precedent. Do you accept that the most immediate nuclear threat is from other countries acquiring nuclear weapons? What then is going to be the role played by your government at the nuclear non-proliferation review conference in 2010... a hasty decision to replace Trident is bound to undermine our ability to have influence at the conference in 2010. Shouldn't we now be offering to reduce the number of warheads on Trident, in order to give a lead to others?

FOREIGN SECRETARY MARGARET BECKETT

It is true that as of today we do not identify an enemy with both a nuclear capability and the ability and intent to use it against our vital interests. But significant nuclear capabilities and nuclear risks remain. There are still substantial nuclear arsenals. The number of nuclear armed states has increased, not decreased. Nothing would please me or this government more than to have a nuclear deterrent that is never used or even threatened because a nuclear threat never emerges. While such risk exists this government believes that maintaining a minimum nuclear deterrent remains a premium worth paying on an insurance policy for our nation. I think there are only two credible positions to take today - you are either in favour or you are against. The notion that somehow there is an excuse that gets you off the problem today is frankly escapology.

SHADOW FOREIGN SCERETARY WILLIAM HAGUE

I have to subscribe to the view that the abandonment of our nuclear deterrent would be extraordinarily ill-advised and indeed a national act of folly. We cannot know... that any situation will arise in the coming decades where we will need the threat of our deterrent, but equally we cannot know that no such situation will arise and indeed arise quite quickly. This country has set a good example in the reduction of its nuclear arsenal but we should not think for a moment that if we were to divest ourselves altogether of that arsenal that other nations would be likely to follow suit for that reason or that those countries known to be seeking nuclear weapons would thereupon abandon their programmes.

EX-DEPUTY LEADER OF THE COMMONS NIGEL GRIFFITHS

After reading the White Paper entitled The Future of the United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent, I have concluded that it has no future, that this country has to become the country for peace, not a country for war. We have led the world in campaigning to meet the Kyoto targets, we have led the fight to eradicate global poverty, we must lead the world in campaigning for the eradication of the nuclear threat and we must lead by example.

JAMES ARBUTHNOT, CHAIRMAN OF DEFENCE SELECT COMMITTEE

We now have the ability to destroy the world. It is, I regret to say, natural human behaviour that, when we have the ability to do something, sooner or later we try it out. That will happen, I believe, before climate change has had time to do it for us.

SNP LEADER ALEX SALMOND

Every single country in the world could say 'we are under threat, we require nuclear weapons'. The road on which people in this House are going down is not to 10 countries having nuclear weapons but, given the declining cost, it's to 100, 150 having nuclear weapons. Do we really think that under these circumstances any form of international agreement will stop a nuclear exchange?

LABOUR MP MICHAEL MEACHER

The US provides this kit to us not because they believe we are necessary for the defence of the West but because it makes us subservient to US foreign policy, as we have already seen over Iraq and Lebanon and as we could still well see over Iran. The question we need to answer tonight is whether Britain is really a safer place if we trigger a spate of nuclear proliferation across the world leading to regional arms races and a world of 40 or more nuclear states.

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND CONSERVATIVE

We live in this very difficult and uncertain world. And we live, let's be frank, with a Russia that is not turning out into a modern democratic society, as we might have wished. A Russia that is re-arming in a significant way. Now Russia, under President Putin, is no threat to the United Kingdom, but in the context of the next 50 years, who is able to predict who might rule from the Kremlin, and have available nuclear weapons with which to threaten the peace of the world?

SIR GERALD KAUFMAN, LABOUR

Do my honourable friends really believe that if we give up Trident the eight other nuclear weapons powers will say 'Good old Britain. They've done the right thing. We must follow suit'?

JOHN MCDONNELL, LABOUR

Gone are the days of empire, gone is the vainglorious strutting the world, seen as a military and nuclear power. Instead we can shape a progressive future for our country as a force for peace in the world, leading the world in the debate about how we can eradicate the threat of nuclear war.

CLARE SHORT, INDEPENDENT

We can only retain this weapon if we are always in good faith with the United States. That means we don't have an independent foreign policy, as has been demonstrated so disastrously in Iraq; as has humiliated our country; as has helped to make the world more dangerous; has divided it more deeply and undermined international law.