This correspondence is made up of the Trident Ploughshares letter to the UK PM about the outcome of the Integrated Defence Review, the reply from the Ministry of Defence, and our response to that reply, which we sent on 13th May and a reply to that from the Defence Nuclear Organisation Secretariat.
When we wrote our first letter it was not known that the increase in warhead numbers had already begun. This revelation has confirmed that the UK Government wishes its nuclear weapon policy and activity to be even less transparent than hitherto in order to have the freedom to act militarily as it wishes, without any parliamentary or public scrutiny. As our letter says this “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 our first letter we were keen to make the point that the UK has been in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) even without the flagrant decision to increase the warhead stock, in relation to Article 1 by sharing weapon information with the US and France, and to Article V1 by its failure to take genuine steps towards disarmament. We do not want to give the erroneous impression that the UK was previously in compliance with the NPT.
Download the response from HM Gov (26 April) to our open letter here
Download our reply to the M Gov response (13 May) here