more on trident

Sorry, more copy and pasting from the paper:

According to the Guardian today:

"The government must explain the purpose of a British nuclear deterrent, something it has failed to do so far, a cross-party committee of MPs says in a hard-hitting report on the future of the Trident missile system published today.

"The most pressing threat currently facing the UK is that of international terrorism," says the Commons defence committee. But witnesses to its inquiry - the Ministry of Defence refused to give evidence - overwhelmingly argued that "the strategic nuclear deterrent could serve no useful or practical purpose in countering this kind of threat".

The MPs say they heard no evidence that Britain faced a current or impending threat from any established nuclear weapons state, and it was not possible to identify future threats with any certainty.

[...]

The committee says: "Before making any decisions on the future of the strategic nuclear deterrent, the MoD should explain its understanding of the purpose and continuing relevance of nuclear deterrence now and over the lifetime of any potential Trident successor system."

Any decision to keep nuclear weapons, must be made "only after a full public debate ... It must not be made in secret"."

Yup.