Thank you for your letter of 26th April.
You make the breath-taking claim that the UK is fully compliant with its obligations under Article 1 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which states::
“Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices. “
Which informed person could seriously believe that all the interchange at scientific and technical level under the Mutual Defence Agreement has made no contribution to a de facto transfer of expertise leading to the development of improved nuclear weaponry? At the very least the traffic is and has been a clear breach of the spirit of the Article and is certainly covered by the term “indirectly”. The UK Government’s discourse on this issue appears to reflect a sense of entitlement to consider that the law means only what is convenient for its own behaviour. It is frustration with this sense of superior entitlement and specious interpretation on the part of the P5 that has led to the development of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and continues to give it both credibility and momentum.
You further claim that the TPNW “ . . risks undermining the effective non-proliferation and disarmament architecture we already have in place. “. The reality is that the current disarmament regime is critically ineffective. As the response to the TPNW shows, the current regime has failed to reassure the overwhelming majority of the non-nuclear states for the straightforward reason that it leaves us all without remedy facing endless, continuing and appalling risk.
Since we wrote to you it has become clear that the decision to increase the cap on the UK’s stockpile of nuclear warheads announced in the Integrated Defence Review was taken some time ago, perhaps as early as 2015, so that the current stockpile number is estimated by citizen monitors as close to 255. This means that the “previously stated intention of reducing to no more than 180 by the mid-2020s “ remained the apparent policy for years when the reality was completely different. This adds up to a huge breach of public and parliamentary trust.
Any “negative assurances” in regard to the use of the UK’s nuclear weapons are meaningless given the qualification that is made in terms of the “right to review” and deliberate ambiguity. Underlying this is the drive to access licence for the government to act militarily as it wishes, without any parliamentary or public scrutiny. That is a stance we would expect from a totalitarian government. In a genuine democracy the armed forces cannot be given a carte-blanche for operational standards and methodology.
In your final paragraph you say that the UK in its P5 Co-ordinator role has pushed forward transparency. In the light of the disrespectful treatment of parliament and pubic which we have noted above this is extraordinary. At this juncture a modest but commendable step towards true leadership on the international stage would be to drop the current hostility toward the TPNW and seek observer status at the Treaty’s first meeting of States Parties in January next year.
In peace,
Trident Ploughshares