South Down MP Margaret Ritchie (SDLP) has submitted an Early Day motion at Westminster calling for an end to UK investments in nuclear weapon production and for the British Government to ‘stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons’.
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Margaret Ritchie MP has proposed the abolition of nuclear weapons including the Trident missile.[/caption]
She said: “This motion reflects the longstanding global outrage at the continued existence and continued production of nuclear weapons. At this very moment the Government intend to sink over £20 billion into renewing Trident while in the same breath jeopardise the public by continuing an agenda of merciless public sector cuts.
“The ability to implement Mutually Assured Destruction is no deterrent, it is no defence. There are no circumstances under which such a course of action could or would be justified and so the continued retention of a nuclear arsenal is an indulgence of vanity, one that we cannot financially or morally afford.
“We must therefore be steadfast and assertive in our continued opposition to what amounts to a costly and potentially catastrophic status symbol. We call on UK businesses to discontinue their immoral investment in the production of nuclear arms while also calling on the Government to live up to its legal obligations as a depositary of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty by stigmatizing, prohibiting and eliminating nuclear weapons including their own.”
The Motion reads: “That This House congratulates the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and PAX Netherlands for their report Don’t Bank on the Bomb, released in November 2015; recognises the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences that any accidental or intentional detonation would have; notes with concern that several UK-based banks and investment management funds, including Children’s Investment Fund Management, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Bank, Old Mutual and Lloyds Banking group, have since 2012 collectively invested £21.1 billion into companies engaged in the manufacture of British and American nuclear weapons; believes these investors should disinvest forthwith from such unethical investments; notes that a new international nuclear weapons ban treaty would likely include a prohibition on the financing of nuclear weapon production, maintenance and modernisation; and urges the UK government to fulfil its legal obligations as a depositary of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) by endorsing the Humanitarian Pledge already signed by 121 nations to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”
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