 The next item of business is a member's business debate on motion 2776, in the name of Bill Kidd, on the Jimmie Reed Foundation report, Trident and its successor programme. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Will those members who wish to speak in the debate press the request to speak buttons now? I call on Bill Kidd to open the debate. Mr Kidd, seven minutes are there about, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Just before I start, there's quite a lot in this debate, so I'm not going to touch on every single element. I hope to bring forward a few interesting points that might not have been considered before, as well as those that are reasonably well known. Before I start, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to those in the public gallery, including representatives of Jimmie Reed Foundation, Scotty CND, Bann the Bomb, Medac Scotland, Navy Not Nuclear and many others, who support, illustrate the high level of public engagement in this issue of nuclear disarmament. In November 2016, the document Trident and its successor programme was published by the Jimmie Reed Foundation and was launched here in the Scottish Parliament. Today, we welcome the findings of this report by bringing them into the Scottish political discourse. May I also take this opportunity to emphasise how we in the Scottish Parliament are not alone in reexamining the nuclear debate? Last year, I attended the UN General Assembly debate on holding a special conference this year to analyse the case for nuclear weapons to be banned on the grounds of humanitarian concerns and the evidenced suffering by populations. That will result in a vote on a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. It should be noted that the vote that has established this conference to take place this year has passed by 126 nations for to 38 against the 16 abstentions. Confidence is high that there will therefore be an historic decision taking place this July, which will validate the points raised by the Jimmie Reed Foundation document. I believe that the well-research findings of the Jimmie Reed Foundation have been affirmed by international discussion at United Nations and in the International Red Cross in responding to the tangible and very serious dangers of hosting and transporting in your country nuclear weapons. I would argue that any continuance of the nuclear weapons programmes in Scotland, particularly those that are vulnerable to misfire and or error, is to undermine the basic function of governance. That is the safety of those within a state's borders. The findings from the Jimmie Reed Foundation show that not only is there a redundant case for trident renewal due to moral and philosophical considerations, but it is also due to its indiscriminate nature. Further, the economic and job-oriented justifications for trident renewal have been proven to be wishful thinking as a nice way of putting it according to the report, which states that fewer than 600 civilian jobs are directly dependent on the existing trident system at Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde, which figures are sourced from the MOD through the Westminster Parliament. The evidence submitted by the Jimmie Reed Foundation is highly corroborated by the findings of UN House, UNA Scotland, UNA Edinburgh and the respected acronym institute through their draft report, the international conference on humanitarian and environmental impacts and responsibilities of hosting nuclear weapons. That highlighted that, since the two bombs were dropped in Japan at the end of the Second World War, 2.5 million survivors have sought treatment by the Japan Red Cross Society-run hospitals. Those hospitals exist purely for those still suffering from the effects of weapons dropped over 70 years ago. As recently as 2015, 11,000 patients were treated. The findings also show that DNA damage has been evidenced by the number of children survivors suffering from cancer who are now at least middle-aged and, in many cases, elderly. I am going to go off slightly a wee tangent here, if you do not mind, because at this point I would like to mention the situation of a friend of mine from Kazakhstan, his name is Karabec Kayukov, who is a famous artist in Central Asia, though he has to hold a paintbrush between his teeth or between his toes. In common, with 1.5 million people in his homeland, Karabec was born with genetic damage through what is called acute radiation syndrome. That was caused by nuclear tests carried out by the Soviet Union in its home area. Karabec was born of restricted height, and he is completely without arms, hands or fingers. He is also an anti-nuclear weapon spokesperson back home, and in that role he was invited here to the Scottish Parliament two years ago, but he was refused a visa to enter the UK as he could not supply fingerprints to go with his passport identification. However, the human spirit is undimmed, and Karabec Kayukov sends his very best wishes for our deliberations here today and to all of the Scottish people. So what about us here today? What about us? We are not immune to radiation ourselves, nor do we have a level of moral superiority, which means that we should be trusted with the weapons of mass destruction where all others are seen as rogues. Some of them are rogues, there is no doubt about that, and there is no doubt about the fact that they might acquire nuclear weapons because we have got them, they exist in the world, and that makes the world a more dangerous place, not a safer one. Real human security is for all peoples, and it cannot be maintained by the threat of annihilation of entire populations. Anyway, this is a small world, and nuclear radiation cannot be contained within space and time. Regarding the risk posed by accidental or potential terrorist incident along the three times a year nuclear convoy route, not only to Scottish residents but to many others in the UK, particularly those who live in the Birmingham, Preston, Weather Bay and Newcastle areas where the convoy has also passed through. Even without malice aforethought, plutonium and other radioactive materials can leak from warheads and contaminate communities, greatly increasing cancer risk and causing major long-term environmental damage. Evidence suggests that extreme cases of accidents could trigger a nuclear reaction that is known as inadvertent yield and would deliver lethal radiation doses. Moreover, according to the MOD's own internal safety watchdog report, a terrorist attack could cause considerable loss of life and severe disruption both to the British people's way of life and to the UK's ability to function effectively as a sovereign state. This consideration falls in line with the evidence of the larger impact of what the humanitarian impact would be if weapons were detonated in the case of war. 100 nuclear weapons in the whole area of south-east Asia, for example—this is a projection that was done by the International Red Cross—a projected 20 million people would die within the first week. If you consider that, that is 100 nuclear weapons warheads. There are 240 warheads in the Trident fleet. I am going to end with this. The very fact that the Jimmy Reid Foundation report has prompted this debate shows that we can still hope that we can look to this year's UN conference with belief. We are not helpless in the face of nuclear state obliteration because we all must take responsibility for our own actions and also take responsibility for the actions of our elected representatives. We sit here as elected representatives, and we represent the people who could be affected by those nuclear weapons. I have 12 members wishing to speak in this debate, so due to that large number, I am minded to accept a motion under rule 8.14.3 that the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes. I absolutely concur with the debate being extended as long as it is necessary, as I do for most member's business debates. However, on a point of principle on this, yesterday I moved a similar motion and was told that the timings had been agreed by business managers. This is not about the debate, but about the point of principle. Why is it? Can I finish my point? Please sit down a minute. Due to what happened, one of the explanations is that I can see the point here that when business managers agree the time for a debate, there will not be all the amendments in that sometimes come in later. I understand that what is going to take place is that there will be a discussion with business managers that when a lot of amendments come in to an important debate, they are making times tighter, that there is a further discussion on timings for debate. Had that been extended yesterday, it would have meant moving decision time, it would have meant a five-minute adjournment of vote and so on, which would have all eaten into the debate. I agree that there is an issue here, but as business managers had agreed it on behalf of their parties with an equal say, I think that it is worth revisiting. I can understand that, in the chamber, there is a desire to look at this. As I say, when there is a lot of amendments, it changes the timings for a debate, so it will be looked at. That has taken a little bit, but not a lot of time, so I now move to the open debate. I am afraid that there are speeches of four minutes. I take Rona Mackay to be followed by Jackson Carlaw, please. First, I thank Bill Kidd for bringing forward this member's debate and the Jeremy Reid Foundation and the authors of the report for their hard work in putting the case for the non-renewal of the obscene weapon on Scotland's shores. This report shows the real impact that the Trident's successor programme will have on Scotland. It destroys Labour and Jackie Baillie's claim that not renewing Trident will cost thousands of jobs. In reality, 600 civilian jobs are dependent of Fastlane and Cooleport, with the successor programme failing to bring even a single new job to the base. Of course, those 600 jobs are vital to the community, but without renewal, there will still be work at the basis for civilian workers for the next 12 to 15 years. By that time, half of those workers will have reached retirement age, have benefited from redeployment or voluntary exit from the sector. Renewing Trident will also have major knock-on consequences for Clyde ship building, with renewal costs meaning fewer orders of new type 26 frigates. Scrapping Trident renewal is not a risk to jobs, but the astronomical cost of Trident, £200 billion, is costing jobs. We all know that this money could be spent far more productively. It could be used to counteract the continuing decline in armed forces expenditure, the decline that creates job losses not just in the Clyde, but across the country. However, Presiding Officer, there is far more to this argument than Pound notes. The recent Trident misfire and subsequent cover-up demonstrates the huge risk that these war machines present to us all. If those weapons are not risky enough, we cannot forget that the man who has control over this weapon on our land is President Trump. Can anyone say hand on heart that this prospect does not terrify them? Then there are the warheads transported by road, travelling through Scotland's most populated city. The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament estimates that an accident on those convoys could lead to plutonium and uranium spreading across distances as vast as 17 kilometres, covering most of Glasgow and outlying areas such as my constituency in eastern Bartonshire. The risk that those convoys pose to human life is simply unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue. The Clyde naval base was chosen to be home to the UK's nuclear submarines due to the depth of the Gerlach. However, that body of water is nowhere near as deep as the splits on Trident within the Labour Party. Labour's position in Trident has become farcical, with a leader in Scotland in favour of nuclear weapons but opposing them, and a UK leader opposed to them but leading a party that supports the renewal. Confused, I certainly am. Presiding Officer, I believe that our Government has a mandate to get rid of Trident. The SNP has been elected for a historic third term, and in every one of our manifestos we have said that we do not support Trident. Now is the time for us to start making plans about how we can do this. We cannot wait for permission that we will never get from the UK Government. We have to go ahead and rid our country of this obscene political weapon. We are the only party that can and will do this. We owe it to our children to support bairns, not bombs. I support this motion. I thank you very much. I call Jackson Carlaw. I call by Gil Paterson. I thank you, Presiding Officer. I start by commenting on Bill Kidd, who is the proposer of this motion. I say that Bill Kidd has now brought forward several debates on the subject over a number of parliaments. I suppose that the obvious knee-jerk reaction sometimes from a Conservative to those who bring forward these issues, particularly those who sometimes have a schoolboy crush with unilateralism, is to initially and immediately dismiss them. I do not do that with Mr Kidd, because I have come to find him an extremely genuine, articulate, measured and, from the perspective of the argument he makes, a convincing proponent of the cause that he promotes. I just have come to a different conclusion to him, but I do not in any sense dismiss the argument that he makes or the compassion with which he makes it, because I think in the way that he articulates it, he demonstrates that he understands the nuance, the people who are involved in the ultimate consequence of anything that might arise from nuclear conflict. I believe that that is what genuinely motivates him in the repeated way in which he ensures that this issue is raised in the Scottish Parliament. I want to make that absolutely clear as I go forward from that point. My own journey in this issue is different. I am a child of the late 1950s, not long after. The war as other members in the chamber will be to who still have come to different conclusions to me. I was vaguely aware and then understood the whole Cuban missile crisis in the six days, the kind of international heightened tension that arose over the Vietnam conflict and the geopolitical manoeuvring of the huge world superpowers. I understood the consequences of the Berlin airlift. I was in Berlin in 1983. I saw, as others probably did during that Cold War period, the reality of the stand-off between East and West. It scared me. I was part of a generation who at school participated in a cadet force who grew up believing that I might actually have to fight a war. I do not believe that is something now with conscription and all the international geopolitical conflict. I do not believe that is something that my children have to consider as a realistic and immediate prospectus. I believe that I did as I grew up. When the Berlin wall fell, I actually flirted with the idea that was any of this any longer necessary. I did so because I have come to the view that I still believe in the nuclear deterrent. I have to say that in all the years leading up almost to the day the Berlin wall fell, I never imagined that it was a genuine possibility. I could not have predicted it. I did not anticipate such a huge change in the geopolitical balance of power in the world. I did not really foresee when I sat there in 1989 the whole different way in which the world has evolved and threats have emerged. I cannot, with any certainty today, look forward another 30 or 40 years and predict what the existential threats might be to peace and security and to this island and the peoples on it. For those reasons, I have come to the view that we should have a proportionate nuclear deterrent retained as part of our defence capability. As a country, we have significantly reduced our reliance upon it in terms of the warheads that we have. The actual cost per person is something like, I do not know, I think that it is like £20p in every £100 that will be spent on defence over the next 30 or 40 years. I recognise that there are others who fundamentally disagree with me on that position. I also recognise that when this issue most recently came up in the House of Commons, it was overwhelmingly supported by some 400 and something votes to a 117 team. I do not know if that will always be my view. I hope and I believe and wish to believe that we will live in a safer world where I might ultimately be able to come to a different conclusion. As I say, I have not held to that position blindly. I have tried to assess the evidence and have retained my position with it. For those reasons, much as I respect Mr Kidd, I cannot support the argument ultimately and believe that we must retain our independent deterrent. Many thanks, Presiding Officer. I start by thanking Bill Kidd for bringing this debate and not forgetting that he has been honoured by folk respecting his views on the matter as a nominee for the Nobel Prize. It is just a pity that he did not get that prize. Once again, we stand in this chamber making the case against nuclear weapons of mass destruction. I am sure that we will all agree, for the sake of our small planet, that we must find a way to disarm. What those weapons of mass destruction are designed to do is almost unimaginable to us all. Bombs that we have built to reduce cities to ashes. A missile designed to fly thousands of miles then split into 12 individual warheads. Each bomb containing enough destructive power to destroy all life in its target and beyond. At supersonic speeds, they tear through the sky in a trail of fire. Scientists call this wicked sight the fingers of God. It does seem more like these people are trying to play God. The madness of the tried nuclear missile programme is beyond comprehension. For that reason, I do not believe that nuclear bombs will ever be used again. It would be mutually assured destruction. But what invokes horror in me is the potential for human error. Just last month, we were told of how a tried missile malfunctioned, a miscalculation caused by human engineers. History is littered with the mistakes of mankind when arrogance overtook rationality, when ignorance eclips sanity. We should not be arrogant to presume nuclear weapons will end well. It is unwise to suppose that we can contend with such unimaginable forces. Just a few miles from my constituency, a vast underground arsenal of nuclear warheads is stored. In the event of human error, the consequences could be cataclysmic. My constituency of Clydebacumill guy would be utterly eradicated in the event of a detonation, along with the whole of the central belt, all the way through to Edinburgh. The aftermath in such an event would wipe out almost the entire Scottish nation since we are centrally built by and large. It might seem ludicrous standing here in the Scottish Parliament talking about a nuclear holocaust in Clydebac and beyond, but the notion of a thousand bomber raids over Clydebac also seemed eccentric before World War II. If there were to be a radiation leak when these weapons are being driven through my constituency, thousands of people could be exposed to it. It would be untold misery. The point that I am trying to make is simply this. Human error is inevitable someplace in this regard. It is just a matter of time. We must surrender these weapons before it is too late. All sides need to strive for nuclear disarmament for the sake of our small planet. Scotland must make its voice heard. We are a nation known for our resistance to the British state's nuclear programme, a forward-looking and conscientious people who reject those immoral weapons. I want to start by thanking Bill Kidd for bringing this debate to the chamber and for giving me an opportunity to talk about the interests of workers in my constituency. Let me say at the outset that I respect those who believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament. I take a different view and believe that we should negotiate to rid the world of nuclear weapons on a multilateral basis. I want to achieve global zero, but whatever your point of view, we need to take responsibility for those employed at Faslane. Here are the facts about employment at Faslane and Coolport. A freedom of information response from the Ministry of Defence in September 2014 revealed that there are 6,800 people directly employed at the base between the MOD and Babcox. A Scottish Enterprise study commission from ECOS identified an extra 4,500 jobs in the supply chain and the local economy. That is 11,300 people. Due to a decision taken when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister to make Faslane the home of the UK's whole submarine fleet, we expect to have around 2,000 more jobs in the next couple of years. We are approaching 13,000 jobs in total, not 600 jobs, as the report would have you believe. I would invite people genuinely to stand at the gates of Faslane at 7am in the morning to see the cars and buses queuing at the north and south gate as thousands go to work. That is just the morning shift. Faslane is the biggest single site employer in Scotland, providing highly skilled, well-paid jobs, accounting for more than a quarter of the full-time workforce in western Bartonshire. When we speak about renewing Trident, let us also remember that what we are referring to is the new fleet of submarines and all of the jobs associated with their construction, maintenance and support. Thousands of workers at Barrow depend on Trident, too. The reason that we have a naval base in my constituency is because of Trident. It would serve no strategic purpose without that. Let me share with you the observation that was made by Derek Tory, who is a trade union convener at Faslane and Coolport, because I believe that it was instructive. In response to the report, he said, and I quote, it is like asking how many people at Glasgow airport directly rely on planes landing or taking off for their jobs, and then answering is only the people who drive the tractors to move planes to the runway or the people who wave them in with their lollipops. In reality, of course, without planes, there would be no airport. It is exactly the same at Her Majesty's Naval Base Clyde. No submarines equals no base and no jobs. According to GMB Scotland, the jobs—I do not have time, I am sorry. According to GMB Scotland, the jobs impact extends to 200 to 300 workers at BAE systems on the Clyde, who will be redeployed to Barrow to work on the new submarines, while waiting for the type 26s to ramp up. Let us not forget the workers at Recife working on the successor programme. Let me conclude by touching on defence diversification. We had a defence diversification agency set up by a Labour Government in the late 1990s. It unfortunately failed to produce anything of note. Here is what others had to say about it. Unite the union in their Executive Council statement on 17 July 2016 said that defence diversification was, and I quote, a pig in a poke. GMB Scotland called on politicians to stop playing fast and loose with highly skilled jobs. Not my words, Presiding Officer, but the words of people that have deep knowledge of the defence industry. We should listen to them. Whether you are a unilateralist or a multilateralist, please do not pay lip service to workers in my constituency about jobs. Do not pretend and tell them that the number of jobs affected is smaller, because they know what the truth is. I thank Bill Kidd for bringing this motion to the Parliament and for giving us the chance to debate this subject, as well as for all the work that he has done in campaigning for nuclear disarmament. I would also like to start by welcoming the report from the Jamiread Foundation, which I think perfectly encapsulates and answers the case against trident renewal. Nuclear weapons are abhorrent and they are indiscriminate. The fact is that there is no justification for their use. In 1945, when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it led to the death of an estimated 246,000 people and the majority of those killed were civilians. The nuclear weapons sitting around the world today, including at Faslain, are up to 3,000 times the power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. That has the power to completely incapacitate Scotland if anything ever went wrong at Faslain, which, as we all now know, it very nearly did. The co-ordinator of the peace pledge union said, "...the prospect of death and destruction caused by accident is no less terrifying than the thought of it being caused deliberately." I would entirely agree. Morally, we simply cannot support the renewal of these weapons of mass destruction and nor should we be forced into accepting them on our very own doorstep. From the storage, to the testing, to the transporting of the weapons and their waste, all of that puts Scotland at risk on a day-to-day basis, and all of that, by accident or design, if anything went wrong, would have an absolutely catastrophic effect on our country. When we look at the economic case against trident renewal, the campaign for nuclear disarmament currently places trident renewal at a colossal £205 billion. Even best-case scenario figures from an estimate from the chairman of the Common Foreign Affairs Committee, Crispin Blunt, put the figure at £179 billion. This time last week, Sandra White led a debate on women against state pension inequality, a campaign for those women born in the 1950s who have effectively been shortchanged by the acceleration of the Pensions Act timetable. Is Westminster making any funds available to address the serious inequality here? Towards the end of last year, I took part in a debate on social security, and across the chamber came account after account from MSPs of constituents suffering at the hands of Tory-imposed austerity. People forced into starvation and illness because of sanctions, people with disabilities having their money reduced. We heard from agency after agency telling us about the effect that austerity and cuts to benefits and welfare were having on their members, reports of people becoming increasingly ill, isolated and suicidal. We have seen the proliferation of food banks across our country. We suffer from food poverty, and an estimated 22 per cent of children living in Scotland live in poverty. I think that that £205 billion could be better spent. Not only could it be better spent in those areas, but it could also be spent and invested in the industries that have a real future in Scotland. Where Westminster has also seen fit to cut funding for, carbon capture storage are renewables industry. What infuriates me most is that when it comes to war and weaponry, money is never an issue and can always be found. Yet when it comes to the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, we are told of the dire straits of our economy and there is never any budget to be found. There is no such thing as a nuclear deterrent. Nuclear weapons have not stopped terrorist attacks here or elsewhere in the world. Nuclear weapons have not prevented the starting of wars or helped to end them. There is the whole hypocrisy. How could the UK be so hypocritical as to have nuclear weapons, yet criticise and rally against others looking to have them? It is just a preposterous situation. The whole trident renewal process and the absolutely colossal expense that goes with it is simply to gratify the UK's Westminster Government superiority complex. It is a dangerous vanity project that needs to be scrapped. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I, too, would like to begin by congratulating Bill Kidd, thanking him for bringing this debate to the chamber this evening and also thanking him for his consistent and principled stance and all the work that he does in this area. I was pleased to take part in November's launch of the Reed Foundation report, Trident and its successor programme. I am grateful to the authors, Mike Danson, Karen Gilmer and Jeff Whitham, for making such a clear, well-researched and well-argued case for non-renewal, employment diversification and our contribution to peace. Parliament has previously voted with the Greens for a constitutional ban on trident and a global ban on nuclear weapons. I know that there exists a majority of members who believe that even if trident were cost-free, if there was no charge, we should continue to demand its end and removal because it is an abomination to even consider using such weapons of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. Although I appreciate Jackson Carlaw's words, in my view, there is no proportionate nuclear deterrent. For those who are not convinced by what I and others see as the moral and philosophical case against renewal and who cite the economic benefits of spend, I cannot call this investment because the return on nuclear weapons is one that I never want to see. Let's be clear that trident provides great benefits but to whom? To banks, to arms suppliers and to multinational companies. The missiles themselves are American and the report confirms that much of the hardware and software is reliant on imported technology. Trident and Newell offers little to the Scottish and UK economies in the way of economic and multiplier effects. Reports from Oxford Economics show that better economic outcomes could be achieved by investing in social security or our food and drink sector, for example. Although the UK Government has clearly decided to safeguard this specific area of defence, many quality jobs in the public sector have been lost due to cuts and the impact on those employees, their families and communities is clear to see. The impact on conventional defence forces, too, is clear. Former MOD personnel, including Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Brown, now oppose renewal. Trident destroys jobs elsewhere in Scotland and the UK and it prevents investment in the jobs of the future in a just transition to the sustainable low-carbon jobs that we urgently need. Real security is about having jobs like those, having a home and having guaranteed clean drinking water. Along with the Reed Foundation and CND, the campaign against the arms trade produced valuable research, and its 2014 report, Arms to Renewables, set out clear examples of how a diversification agenda would be of great benefit. Creating such good-quality, secure jobs and utilising the skills that we really need in our new industries, their research shows that offshore wind and marine energy could produce more jobs than the entire arms industry. Cats described their vision for a safer world as one that guarantees highly skilled manufacturing jobs that will be there in the future. Crucially, that is really important. It creates the kind of future that we might want to see, we might want to be part of. It is us that create the future that we are going to live in. Who is the we when it comes to discussing Trident in general? The moral and philosophical case presented by the Reed Foundation makes clear that the democratic deficit involved in ignoring the overall position of the people in Scotland towards Trident. The Reed Foundation's report was dedicated to Dr Alan McKinnon and John Ainsley, who campaigned tirelessly for nuclear disarmament before their passing in 2015 and 2016 respectively. I am proud to do anything in my power to carry forward their incredible work along with colleagues in this Parliament and the millions of people across the world who want to see Governments pursue a radically different and more peaceful agenda. I would like to thank Bill Kidd for bringing this member's debate to the chamber, and I fully appreciate his views most definitely. However, the only thing that would stop the world from slipping into a third world war in the 20th century was the existence of opposing nuclear powers. France, the United Kingdom and the United States on one side and with the Soviet Union on the other. The ability to destroy one's enemy, but only at the cost of destroying yourself, has proved to be the greatest reason against waging war upon your enemy. It was this that stopped the Cold War from turning hot. Now, in the 21st century, we do not face the exact same challenges as those of the 20th century, but some similar old problems are raising their heads again. A resurgent, Russia, is pursuing an aggressive policy against its neighbours. While in the south China sea, the Chinese are illegally gobbling up, territory and rogue states continue to try constantly and get their hands on nuclear weapons so that they can threaten us and hold us to ransom. I thank Maurice Corry for taking intervention and just ask him given that he is generally developing an argument in support of the possession of nuclear weapons. Can he tell us what the criteria that he would apply to which countries should be allowed to have nuclear weapons and which one shouldn't? Maurice Corry Cabinet Secretary, those who show proper control, as you probably know, there is a monitoring force in place that is actually financed and supported by the major nations of the world and the major nuclear powers to ensure that the safe-keeping of nuclear warheads is properly guarded around the various ex-Soviet Union states. I am presuming that, under proper control, that means that, when you press the button, you go in the correct direction. Maurice Corry Everything, Mr Finlay, has to be tested. Sometimes a test proves a need to change a mechanism or whatever, but you cannot have total 100 per cent perfection on that. Obviously, that is what happened in that case. Obviously, it did self-destruct. That was what it was supposed to do and it did it perfectly. No, I must continue. With the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world, no-one in this chamber can know what threats will continue to emerge in the coming decades. I was fortunate enough when I was serving in the Balkans, in particular in Bosnia, I was liaising with the Russian Brigade and I was given some very good advice from my Russian Army opposite number. He told me, do not drop your guard. You never know who will be in charge in my country here in Russia. We admire your strong strategic nuclear defence force. Do not drop your guard. I would advise the day of members here advice not to be ignored. When you spoke earlier, you were articulating the balance of terror, but that was predicated upon rational state actors. Do you consider the heads of state for each of the P5 members as rational actors in the present day? I would take a certain judgment on that, but obviously, like the cure at Segg, there are good parts and there are bad parts of it. Therefore, now is not the time for the United Kingdom to disarm and leave itself defenseless against the other nuclear nations or groups that could get nuclear weapons. With the cost of maintaining our nuclear deterrent running at only 6 per cent of our defence budget and 0.1 per cent of total government spending, the cost of running the nuclear deterrent is affordable and represents an important and sensible investment in our future national security. There is not even to mention the benefits to the West Scotland region, which I represent. Our nuclear deterrent is securing thousands of jobs at Fastlane. It is now one of the largest employer sites not just in the west but in the entirety of Scotland. With the entire feeder submarine to be based out of Fastlane in the future, the number of jobs sustained is going to go up from the current 6,800 personnel employed at the base to over 8,200 by 2022. However, bear in mind this. Her Majesty's naval base Clyde is the real peace camp, not the camp on the A814. That brings with it a significant economic benefit to local communities surrounding Fastlane. That does not even include the thousands of jobs that are resizing on the Clyde that will be protected thanks to the construction projects of the successor submarine programme. GMB Scotland has estimated that up to 40,000 jobs in Scotland are dependent on Trident, and that is a lot of people employed. The GMB Scotland Secretary Gary Smith was right to say that the 40,000 defence workers in Scotland are as vital to our national security as the armed forces, without the skills of the workforce and the yards on the Clyde and Recife. The Royal Navy could not defend the nation. For almost 50 years now, the United Kingdom has been kept safe thanks to the current fleet of vanguard submarines patrolling and maintaining our nuclear deterrent 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 360 days a year. Their four replacements, now named the Dreadnought class, will ensure that protection remains in place until the 2060s. It is vital that our national interest and security, the interests of our allies abroad, the safety of citizens and also for the thousands of people in Scotland whose jobs depend on our nuclear deterrent, that we keep our nuclear deterrent in this uncertain world in which we live. That is why Scotland must remain part of the United Kingdom. That is why Scotland must stop. We are going to keep it as your argument. I am just going to say that we must remain part of the United Kingdom. No, you have to stop. I will give you extra time for interventions. I am now going to call George Adam to follow by Elaine Smith. George Adam, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. After the previous contribution, where do I start, Presiding Officer? I think that I will start by thanking my colleague Bill Kidd for bringing this debate to the chamber. I am pleased to speak in this subject, because it is one of the issues that is the reason why I got involved in politics. I have been involved so long that I remember the debate on Trident as a replacement for Polaris. I disagreed with nuclear weapons then, as I do now. My old dad went to his first ever demo at Fast Lane at the age of 63. He came to the conclusion that there is no place in our world for these weapons of mass destruction, so if an old guy like my old dad can make his change his mind as a pensioner, I am quite sure that there are others who can see the light in this argument as well. The Jimmy Reid Foundation report certainly presents the case for non-renewal of Trident and its replacement by the successor programme very effectively. The report is clearly set out in three sections explaining the moral case, the economic case and the defence case for non-renewal. In each of those areas, the report clearly states in no uncertain terms how renewal will negatively impact the people of our country, specifically those that are living in and around the west of Scotland. Renewin Trident and the continuing to fire hundreds of billions of pounds into something that we all hope will never use at the cost of funding for projects that will benefit the community, the environment and Scotland's economy seems bizarre to me. In Paisley, for example, local families and businesses are struggling, yet Westminster thinks that it is okay to spend £205 billion on weapons that will undoubtedly only affect the very civilians that we claim we are trying to protect. That does not make sense. The moral implications of the successor programme are extreme. The existence of nuclear weapons threatens the whole of civilisation. Unlike conventional warfare, a nuclear attack does not discriminate between hostile aggressors or innocent civilians, or in the speak of the president of the White House, the good guys or the bad guys. That is a direct contradiction to the principles of what is known in some circles, as I just wore. How can we support the destruction of thousands of innocent people if we ever had to use those weapons? The response to that would no doubt be that the order for nuclear attack would never be given, which brings me to the question of the sense of spending a fortune in something that will never be used while families are struggling financially throughout our communities. The terms are rational used by those in support of nuclear weapons, yet the report almost humorously renders that argument useless. Instead of creating fear and uncertainty, the non-renewal of tried and would free up massive amounts of money for public sector jobs, education, healthcare and conventional defence strategies that the list goes on. In Paisley and Renfrewshire alone, even I cannot imagine the financial benefits to my constituents. To me, the issue of tried and is simple. While Westminster covers up missile test failures costing up to £17 million each, collisions in the Atlantic and breaches in fuel cladding, the fallout from our Tory hard Brexit will undoubtedly hit the poorest in my community the hardest. Given the sticky situation that the people of Scotland are already in because of something that we did not vote for, how can we support the successor programme? Again, something that the people of Scotland in numerous occasions say they do not want. The reported £205 billion that it will take to replace tried and would cost every UK taxpayer £3,000 a year. It would cost my constituency of Paisley alone £242 million. Think of what that money could do for Paisley, think of what that money could do for your constituency and, instead of investing in nuclear weapons, I, for one, would rather invest in the people of Scotland. Thank you very much for calling me to speak to commend the report produced by the Jummaryd Foundation and to congratulate Bill Kidd not only on securing the debate but for his tireless campaigning on the issue and his approach to building a cross-party coalition on the matter. I will be very clear at the beginning that Scottish Labour has a recently confirmed policy against trident renewal. Anyone who is genuinely anti-trident would want to welcome that. There is an economic case and a defence case against renewal, but I believe that we should always begin with the moral case, which is well summed up by the ex-foreign minister of Australia, Gareth Evans. The fact remains that the existence of nuclear weapons as a class of weapons threatens the whole of civilisation. Is he not the case with respect to any class or classes of conventional weapons? It cannot be consistent with humanity to permit the existence of a weapon that threatens the very survival of humanity. When you take away the smoking mirrors and the patriotism and the difficult history that this has had in Scotland and the UK, I think that it comes down to this. Those missiles are designed to kill on an industrial scale, and that's wrong, it's repugnant and it's immoral. I don't believe that the answer, of course, is to simply remove them from Scotland to England. Whether those weapons are based at Fazlain Barrow or even in the US, it makes no difference. They are a terrifying threat wherever they are. I also say to colleagues that it really has passed time that the UK took seriously our obligations under the UN treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. We can't simply wait for Russia or the US to do it. We should be leading the way. Presiding Officer, in November I helped to host the initial announcement of this report by the Jimi Reid Foundation here in Parliament. The report sets out the cost of trying—we've heard this—the cost of getting rid of it economically and also personally for those who work with it and the lengthy history of resistance against it. Of course, there are some and we've heard them saying that getting rid of trident will be an attack on workers, a number of whom are highly skilled. I understand that point and I do have some sympathy with it. No one should lose their job due to trident decommissioning, so we must make sure that that is part of any plan going forward. However, as this report states, 600 civilian jobs are directly dependent on the existing trident system at Fazlain. I think that, in a civilised 21st century society like Scotland, we should be able to redeploy 600 workers into suitable sectors, preferably in and around the existing base. The remaining jobs at HMNB Clyde, according to the report, which is well researched, work on other submarines and surface ships, and those jobs are not at risk. The report also suggests setting up a Scottish Defence Defesification Agency, as proposed by the STUC, which will help to redeploy workers and integrate them into new roles. Indeed, Joonison this week made the point that there should be more socially and economically productive work for some of our most skilled craftspeople than the upkeep of weapons of mass destruction. I think that if people see that a plan is in place, then it is much easier to make the argument against renewal. Anyone who wants to come and debate that can do it after the debate with the authors of the report. The UK Government estimates that renewal of trident submarines will cost around £31 billion, but the report shows that the lifetime cost of maintenance and staffing will be £205 billion. For me, that is not a price that is worth paying for a deterrent that simply makes us part of the international bullet boy club. The economic argument for scrapping trident also seems fairly clear to me. Spending billions on renewing nuclear weapons is wrong at any time, but it is particularly wrong when vicious cuts are being unleashed in so many areas. Repots such as this only bolster my belief that trident should not be replaced and my resolve to fight against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Storing our own weapons of mass destruction is wrong, replacing them is wrong and using them would be not only wrong but reckless, despicable and immoral. I congratulate Mike Danson, Karen Gilmour and Geoff Wharton on the report and our colleague Bill Kidd for bringing it to the chamber this evening. I thank the Jimi Reid Foundation for producing the report that stimulated the debate. I will put on the record my opposition to this, but there has been a lot of ground covered this evening. I really want to focus my remarks on the question of a trident's supposed independence. The assertion is often made, but one that I would argue is both ill-informed and misleading. Let us consider what independence in this context means. There are two aspects. First, there is the concept of operational independence, whereby the UK has the ability to patrol and launch missiles, while a technically plausible claim that there are significant political complications on which I will return to later in my remark. The second crucial question of trident's independence is in its procurement and maintenance. Given that the missiles on British trident submarines are part of a common pool of missiles shared with and maintained by the United States, it is understood that, if the United States were to woof devolier co-operation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years. Not my worst-presiding officer, but those of the cross-party trident commission, co-chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkin, Sir Min Campbell and Lorde formally Des Brown, two of whom are former UK defence secretaries. That situation means, in the words of Professor Colin Gray, as cited by the cross-party commission, that the British nuclear deterrent is hostage to American goodwill, the dependency of which is critical. Writing in 2014, the commission stated that it might be difficult to imagine circumstances where the United States would cease to have a strong interest in strategic survival of Europe, but it went on to say rather pressently that there was a doubt related to the possibility that isolationist tendencies that have always existed within the United States could strengthen again, adding that US interests are different from British or European ones. I am sure that, given recent developments in American politics, members will wish to reflect on these serious points. On the question of operational independence, there are two aspects, the technical operational independence and the political operational independence. While the technical aspects of operational independence are difficult to verify from information available in the public domain, I believe that it is possible to say something about the question of the political independence, something that is very compromised by the complete lack of independence in procurement and maintenance. The power to authorise a launch of an arm-triving missile rests with the UK Government. The most likely scenario on which such an authorisation would be given is as part of a US-led NATO strike against a nuclear arms state aggressor, where UK participation would not only be tokenistic but strategically unnecessary, but UK does not impact upon the strategic balance. It can be argued that resources would be better deployed from a NATO perspective on conventional forces such as anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic. The UK's membership of NATO also vitiates the argument of deterrence, given that the US is the effective nuclear guarantor of article 5. The final argument, addressed in favour of trying, is one described by the cross-party commission as a future circumstance in which the UK faces a strategic threat where the extended US nuclear deterrent is under question, but in which the United States would not obstruct to UK exercising its independent operation. Such a situation is all but impossible to conceive, but there is a useful historic example to demonstrate how such a scenario could potentially play out. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy stated that, it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. In making that statement, Kennedy made clear that the Soviet Union would not be able to limit the theatre of any nuclear exchange to North America and the Caribbean. Any launch from Cuba would not be regarded as an aggressive action solar from Cuba, but from the USSR. Where an aggressive nation to be faced with the threat of a unilateral nuclear strike from the UK? In the face of annihilation, it would have nothing to lose in stating that it would regard any such attack as an attack by NATO and the United States. The First Party commission notes that extended nuclear deterrence is inherently problematic, requiring the sponsor, in this case the United States, to risk their own city's destruction to protect an ally whose actions they may not agree with. If such a scenario were to transpire, it would be clear that the United States would do all that it could to obstruct a unilateral British strike, making the fresh reply to the UK during the Suez crisis pale in comparison. Unfortunately, the time limits me, but I hope that, in those remarks, I have succeeded in convincing some members that it is simply not sustainable to describe the UK's nuclear deterrence as independent. I thank Bill Kidd for bringing that motion. I fear that we will come from it from different angles, but I am grateful for the chance to discuss it. My thought process on nuclear weapons goes back to when I was a soldier in the 1980s in the British army of the Rhine. We were deployed out there to prevent the incursion of the Russian army. We were outnumbered six to one. In fact, the Russian third echelon troops alone outnumbered the entire force. Our job out there was to form a bridge to stop the Russians coming in and wait for air supply from the USA. We needed to delay them for five days. We had a plan, a plan based on the folder gap and holding the Russians there. At that stage, our plan was to hold them. The Russians knew that. They absolutely knew that. Their plan was to get us out of the way as quickly as possible. That is why we practiced in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare to defend against anything that they threw at us. As horrific as it may seem, and I agree that they are important, we had to be prepared because we knew that if we did hold them up and we delayed them for anything like four days, the response would be nuclear weapons or chemical weapons to get rid of us. At that stage, we had approximately 560 nuclear weapons. That is the UK. They were based between battlefield nuclear weapons, which were lance missiles, tactical nuclear weapons, airborne missiles and strategic deterrents in the form of submarines. That is a lot of nuclear weapons. It was frightening. It is frightening. It is a frightening thought to even go there. I was delighted in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin came to power and it turned to be the end of the Cold War. We started to knock back on the amount of nuclear weapons that there were. In fact, we knocked back so considerably that we dropped it back to 180 nuclear weapons that we hold. When we get down to the successor programme, we will go down to 120. That is a 79 per cent reduction on the amount of nuclear weapons that we have had. There are no other countries in the world that have reduced nuclear weapons to that level. In fact, if anyone wanted to interrupt me, I would have taken an intervention because there is one—Ukraine. Ukraine did that by being overseen by the organisation of security and cooperation in Europe. On 5 December, they signed the Budapest memorandum. They agreed at that stage that they would give up unilaterally all their nuclear weapons and that they would rely on the Soviet Union and America to protect them. That, as we know, did not happen. I will put those comments to you as a thought process. At the moment, our army of 82,000—no, I am sorry, my time is so short. I may be just in a minute, let me just see if I can develop this a bit more. Our army of 82,000 with an American army of 535,000 actually has less soldiers in the field than the North Korea does. In fact, North Korea has 1.7 million soldiers in arms and has 7.7 million soldiers in reserve. Chinese army has 28 million regulars, and goodness knows how many reserves. I think that just about all of them could become reserves. The Russian army has 771,002 million reserves. Therefore, it is right that we have an ultimate deterrent. To me, the argument is not right on why we shouldn't have one. It is how we manage that deterrent. For me, it is very important. An argument that I would like to develop is whether we should have three or four boats. I personally believe that three boats would be sufficient, and I believe that the running costs of four to five per cent of the defence budget are perfectly manageable. I am sorry that I am running out of time. I would just like to say that I do not believe that Trident is a dangerous weapon. I have guarded nuclear weapons and I know the care that they have taken. Therefore, I support having nuclear weapons as a weapon of very last resort and the ultimate deterrent. I believe that we would give it up would be extremely dangerous. I thank Bill Kidd for bringing this debate forward. He is a consistent campaigner and someone who seeks to build bridges on this issue. Can I say to Edward Mountain that the idea of a nuclear weapon that is not dangerous is a new and novel concept to me. Politics is about debating the big issues of the day and it is about discussing and hearing counter-arguments and attempting to influence people and winning them over to your position by the strength of that argument. That is one of the big issues for those of us who are opposed to Trident renewal. That is our task in Parliament. We now have the Scottish Labour Party, the SNP and the Green Party opposed to Trident renewal. The political task for us now should be to convince others. I want the Liberals to be on board. As a socialist, I am always an optimist and I urge the Tories to join us in opposition to Trident renewal. I have to say to Rona Mackay that she thinks that her speech is the way to bring people together and grow the coalition against Trident. I think that she maybe wants to reconsider. We do not build that coalition through moral indignation. The argument will be one when we are able to address defence, economic and other concerns head on. When we can reassure those who are worried, those who will be directly affected, whether they are workers on the Clyde, business owners around Fastlane or people fearful about the country's defences, once we convince them that we have the answers to their fears. Those arguments are there to be taken on in one. The military argument grows weaker by the day. We now have ex-generals and field marshals such as Lord Bramill and General Bramsbottom saying that the changes in international politics make Trident an irrelevance. Major General Patrick Cordenly. I very much take the fact that there are some military generals who might argue against it. None of the people that you are mentioning have served, and I have been regular soldiers, serving in the last five years. Have you got somebody in the last five years that would support your argument? Neil Findlay. Those people have operated at the very highest level of the armed forces, and we also have defence secretaries coming on board, of all parties coming on board. I think that there is a growing case against and the military argument does grow weaker. Patrick Cordenly, who led the British Armed Forces in the First Gulf War, said that strategic nuclear weapons have no military use. It would seem that the Government wishes to replace Trident simply to remain a nuclear power alongside the other four permanent members of the Security Council. That is misguided and flies in the face of public opinion. We have more to offer than nuclear bombs, and they identify cybercrime, climate change and terrorism as the main threats to our security. It is in these issues that any defence investment should be focused. For me, the jobs argument is one of the most important remaining arguments that we have to nail, because in this debate the workers in the communities affected by Trident are a key consideration. We want them to join us and the cause of disarmament. We have to give assurances to local supply chain companies, small businesses, engineers, technicians and fabricators that we have a real and genuine plan to create new jobs for every worker, not imaginary jobs but a guaranteed future. I think that with £205 billion, surely we can do that. It cannot be beyond the wit of women and men to use that eye-watering sum of money for things that will benefit humanity, not if it was ever used to destroy it. According to SPICE, there are around 15,000 jobs across the UK that are associated with Trident, and the Reid Foundation paper says 11,000. Those are a mix of direct supply and local associated services. That means that every job costs between £14 million and £18 million. As a job creation scheme is not good value for money over a lifetime after contract, I would suggest. Of course, that is for something that we hope never to use, because if we did, it would wipe out the human race. I welcome the Reid Foundation's report as a contribution to the debate. I look forward to a world free of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. I believe that we all, all of us in here, want to live in peace and solidarity with our fellow human beings. Thank you very much. I call Mary Todd, and I will call the cabinet secretary to wind up. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you to Bill Kidd for bringing forward this important issue for members' debate. Times have changed since the Cold War. The UK Government's own national security strategy identifies terrorism, cyber warfare and natural disasters as the greatest threats to national security, not nuclear warfare. Yet the UK Government still wants to renew Trident, knowing fine well that it is outdated and ineffective in the face of major threats to global security. In the 21st century, not only does Trident fail to enhance our security, it fundamentally undermines it. If the UK can argue that Trident is essential for its security, can other states not reach the same logical conclusion? The UK's refusal to give up Trident is a blatant disregard of the principles of the non-proliferation treaty, to which it is a signatory. There is clearly a strong moral and ethical case against nuclear weapons. Their use can never satisfy the principles of just war theory, because they are disproportionate force and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians. Let's put this into perspective. The destructive power of one Trident missile is estimated to be the equivalent of eight Hiroshimas, and each of the UK's four nuclear submarines carries 16 Trident missiles. We know that Trident is both powerful and indiscriminate, and if it is used, it would kill millions of innocent men, women and children and affect the health of future generations to come. An issue that we face in the Highlands is storing and transporting nuclear material, and it should be a lesson to all of us not to burden and endanger future generations with the decisions that we make today. Right now in the Highlands, we have American Air Force cargo planes transporting weapons-grade uranium from Doonray on the north coast to the US. This material came to Scotland for safe storage from behind the Iron Curtain at the end of the Cold War. Last year, David Cameron did a deal with President Obama, and now we are sending that material to Trump. While many people in the constituency are very glad to see it go and not to have the burden of keeping it safe for the next 100,000 years, many have expressed concerns about the safety and security, particularly since the airport runway is too short for such a big plane to take off, so refuelling at a base in Murray is needed before that particular cargo crosses the Atlantic. The extraordinary cost of trident diverts resources from other conventional defence. In Scotland, all of the investment is being stripped out, and with the closure of Fort George in the Highlands, we will be left with no personnel. Sure, they will visit us to use the bombing ranges, and the deeply unpopular nuclear submarine will still go up and down our coast, disrupting our fishermen. I want to make a couple of final points before I finish. Like Tom Arthur, I wonder whether our independent nuclear deterrent is really independent. The debacle of the recent failed test showed us that, because of US Government involvement, the people of the United States are better informed about trident than we are. Polls have consistently shown that the majority of Scots oppose trident, and the Scottish Parliament and most political parties in Scotland oppose trident. There is a fundamental issue of democracy here. In summary, trident diverts resources. It is ineffective, it is immoral, it is dangerous, it is not independent, and we do not want it. Let us not have it. I call Keith Brown to close for the Government. As ever in the chamber, we have heard informed and passionate debates against trident, as well as its successor programme. Indeed, against all nuclear weapons, and I, like others, would commend Bill Kidd for bringing this matter to the chamber, and echo his words to those in the gallery who are here today and who have been involved in the report. It is a report that, very effectively, demolishes the arguments made by Jackie Baillie in relation to the claims that she makes for jobs that are dependent on the successor programme. We have had something of a mini-max thing. On the one hand, we have had Jackson Carlaw minimising, I believe, the cost of that by referring to it as being, I think, £20.00 every 100 pounds, and then quietly adding in over the next 40 years. It is a hard way to try and describe £205 billion and what that means to people. We have had the maximisation argument from Jackie Baillie in relation to the number of jobs, and we have had the idea that jobs are the argument. She made one or two introductory comments about multilateralism, which she usually does, and then it was all about jobs. There is no way on earth that, as Alison Johnstone and others have said, you can justify expenditure of £205 billion for the number of jobs that are said to be dependent upon it. However, as others have said, the main argument against that is that nuclear weapons are morally wrong. They are morally wrong for a number of reasons, but especially because of the indiscriminate nature of them. The fact that you cannot launch a strike with nuclear weapons and restrict that to those that you would see as being your enemy without taking in huge numbers of civilian and often innocent populations is indiscriminate and absolutely devastating in their impacts. Given that, a very interesting point when I asked Maurice Corry about what countries should be allowed to have them, he said that those that can exercise proper control, I am sure that, if he thinks about this a bit longer, he will very quickly think of countries that could quite conceivably have proper control of whatever that means of nuclear weapons or whatever he means by it, that he would not want to see anywhere near nuclear weapons. The point that I was trying to make is how do you decide who is deserving, who is responsible enough to have nuclear weapons and who is not? If you cannot do that, it is hypocritical to say that we can have them and others cannot have them. It is also the truth that they are extremely expensive and the consequences of that expense in terms of opportunities foregone. Many members have mentioned social programmes, but even if we restrict it to the military, I met this afternoon with senior military figures who were talking about the cuts to defend services, cuts that we have seen over many years. We saw P-45s being handed out to soldiers in Afghanistan on active duty, also soldiers in Afghanistan telling them that the regiments that they had joined up from Scotland were being abolished or merged. Those are the effect of the cuts. Those are the opportunity costs, even if you restrict it to the military, of expenditure on trident and nuclear weapons. That is one of the reasons why, as Neil Findlay said, so many serving personnel who have to be quite quiet about what they say, but previous serving personnel and ex-senior political figures involved in defence have now said that it is not worth the candle in many different ways. In June-July last year, the UK Government voted in favour of the trident successor programme, despite all but one Scottish MPs voting against renewal. As members will also be aware, in January this year, the Sunday Times led with a story that had been a misfire of a trident test missile one month before that vote, which the UK Government chose not to disclose. There was a bit of a light-hearted exchange about missiles going off in the wrong direction. Just think about the consequences, had that had warheads on it and been fired in anger. Think about the consequences. That could have quite easily come back on to the very people who are seeking to deploy against somebody else. I will take an intervention. Edward Mountain. Sorry, in fairness, and I know that you have military experience, it is exactly the same as me. All weapons at some stage will misfire, and the whole point is that you have fail safes. You have fail safes on any weapon apart from small arms, which can allow you to detonate the missile or to get rid of it. In this case, it did not have a nuclear weapon on top of it. All it was doing was testing the missile system. Sometimes missiles go wrong. Will the cabinet accept that missiles sometimes do wrong and go wrong? It is important to test them. Of course, I accept that. There is a lengthy process for testing weapons of all different descriptions. What I am talking about is the consequences of it going off. If you have a misfire in an SA-80, you have got a real damage to the person who is firing it. If you have a misfire in relation to a trident nuclear missile, the consequences are felt by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, so it is a question of the scale. Those reports, I think, are deeply worrying. I will do. I suspect that you have to the cabinet secretary, Ms McKelvie. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and cabinet secretary, for taking the intervention. The issue about tests and it is an issue that I have pursued in this place for 10 years with numerous Governments, whether they are Labour or Tory Governments, is tests. When is this Government going to abide by the rules, take responsibility and compensate the nuclear test veterans who were used as guinea pigs at Christmas Island? That is the result of tests where people are genetically modified and lose children and have all sorts of health conditions because of tests—no tests done without any real oversight. That is the people that this Government— I think that that is a long intervention, Mr McKelvie—to take responsibility for. Long intervention is not absolutely in point. I entirely agree with the last speaker. Those reports of the tests that were not disclosed to Parliament—that is the important point—were not disclosed. All previous missile tests were publicised by the MOD and it is a serious concern that the information was not disclosed before the vote on trident. The Secretary of State for Defence even now has refused to confirm or deny that such an incident took place. I do not know if he realises how foolish that makes him look, given that this is very available to people in the United States. He did not confirm that when called to account in the House of Commons. He has stated that we have absolute confidence in our independent nuclear deterrent. I do not think that that is the case and I think that it was a very good speech by Tom Arthur in relation to the putative independence of that system. That refusal to acknowledge incident is unacceptable, and the Scottish Government calls for full disclosure by the UK Government. There are various estimates, as we have heard, of the figures of £180 billion that was mentioned by Crispin Blunt, a Conservative MP and £205 billion by others. Replacing trident will see billions of pounds of wasted money that could be better spent elsewhere. However, one of the most compelling arguments is the argument that was made by Moretodd and others. What we have in this Parliament—we have had a number of votes over the last, I think, six years—is clearly expressing its opposition to the basing of weapons in this country. We have also had 58—or maybe 57—of the 59 MPs from Scotland voting against that. When you have that, that is a pretty explicit expression of the will of the people of Scotland. However, worse than that, it is the fact that the weapons are based here. The weapons are based in this country and the consequences of a test that goes wrong if it happens in those circumstances are felt here. To see that this week, the MOD has said that it has looked at the issue of whether it is based in Devonport and has ruled it out because it is not safe enough for the local population. What does that say to the people in west central Scotland? Jackson Carlaw shakes his head, but maybe he has got an answer. What does that say about the relative value that he put on the livelihood of people in west central Scotland? Specifically, on 7 November, the MOD announced that we would see a 20 per cent reduction in the defence of state in Scotland. Those cuts will have far-reaching economic and social impacts. For example, as the report highlights, the removal of the army from Fort George in Inveress sees over 700 job losses, over a 200-year history of being located in that area, and approximately a £20 million loss of income to the local economy. The report also questions the impact— The cabinet secretary will have to close, I am afraid. Scotland, in relation to the jobs—of course, as Neil Findlay and others have said—is a very real concern. Although the report that has been produced goes in some detail to the possibility of ensuring that those jobs can be safeguarded. We have a strong system of business support available through Scottish Enterprise and others to make sure that that diversification could happen. Finally, I would like to stress to the chamber that the Royal Navy and its armed forces personnel have the full support of the Scottish Government, as we support all of its armed forces and their highly professional and skilled personnel. Our opposition remains to the possession, the threat and the use of a weapon system that is strategically and economically wrong and whose use would bring unspeakable humanitarian suffering and widespread environmental damage. The Scottish Government therefore continues its commitment to the safe and complete withdrawal of Trident from Scotland. We have repeatedly called upon the UK Government to cancel its plans for the new life of Trident, and we will continue to do so. That concludes the debate. I thank all members for their contributions in the debate. I close this meeting.