General Election 2010

General Election 2010
Dorothy Forsyth has written to Prospective Parliamentary
Candidate Stephen Lloyd:

Stephen Lloyd (Liberal Democrat) replied:

I (and my Party) would vote against the replacement of Trident. Very much for the reasons you have outlined below in your email.

We would push for multilateral disarmament at the 2010 Non - Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

Dear (candidate) I am writing to you, in your capacity as a prospective parliamentary candidate, to ascertain your views on nuclear weapons.

I am particularly concerned about the cost of Trident and its replacement at a time of national and global financial crisis. Many cutbacks are being proposed across the public sector, yet the replacement of Trident is expected to cost in

excess of £76bn. In a situation where Britain's security needs are very different from those of past decades, with no state threatening the UK, the onus is on those who prioritise money for nuclear weapons above other commitments to make the case for such huge levels of spending. Spending money on nuclear weapons means we cannot use it for other more socially useful spending, or on helping to solve the problems of poverty and climate change.

I am also concerned about Britain's security. I believe that retaining nuclear weapons will make us less safe. Many of the threats we face as a country, from terrorism to climate change cannot be tackled by nuclear weapons, but their retention has the potential to make us less safe. The more that countries such as Britain justify their possession of nuclear weapons on the grounds of an uncertain future, the more likely it is that non-nuclear states will seek to use the same rationale to justify developing their own weapons systems. For this reason, there is increasing international demand for the global abolition of nuclear weapons as the best way to secure our safety. In fact, a majority of UN member states, including China, India and Pakistan, already back a Nuclear Weapons Convention, which would ban these weapons in the way that chemical and biological weapons are outlawed.
I have included two specific questions below to which I would appreciate yes/no answers. Your answers are likely to affect how I vote in the forthcoming election.