Nick with Mr Naoto Kan MP (left) and Mr Motohisa Furukawa MP

Nick  today met with a delegation led by Mr Naoto Kan, Deputy Prime Minister of the Shadow Cabinet of Japan.

Mr Kan was at the House of Commons to discuss Parliament and UK democracy, to inform his Democratic Party of Japan’s proposals for the Japanese general election expected later this year.

But no country is going to be able to ride out the downturn alone. The world economy is simply too interdependent. There is no protectionist solution to our problems. That’s why the international response agreed in London last week is so important. If we are to protect and provide jobs in this country then we need global agreements to get the global economy moving again.

The need for international co-operation right now stretches further than simply economic agreements. Two weeks ago a group of students from Newcastle University were down at Westminster as part of the Students Stop Aids campaign. They were keen to remind the Government of its commitments to halting the spread of HIV in the developing world. They were right – if we are to see our own economy continue to grow we must not allow other nations to fall backwards into poverty. We have a duty to continue to fight against the spread of preventable diseases around the world, even when times are difficult at home.

We must also maintain the global fight against climate change. In the North East we’ve approached renewable energy as a key provider of new jobs, and it’s fair to say we’re now the UK centre in this field.

The work we’ve done towards building a wind farm factory on the banks of the Tyne is starting to pay off. With further announcements to come we could be looking at several thousand new jobs, while also making sure our region plays its part in facing the global environmental challenge.

Serious-minded MPs stay out of the silly season by going on holiday, nurturing the constituency or clearing off to the Edinburgh Festival. That’s what I was doing until I picked up the Sunday Times. Normally I throw the paper away and keep the Culture section but, being on holiday, I read David Cameron’s article about the Georgian incursion into South Ossetia. Lights, camera, action: cue David. The Tory leader is suddenly among the Georgians. This modern-day Metternich has a plan. Georgia’s leaders are probably not used to dealing with Conservative politicians, and they seem to have taken his encouragement at face value. They shouldn’t.

As told to the readers of the Times, the Tory Talleyrand’s plan has three elements. We must all condemn Russia, there must be “urgent diplomatic efforts”, and the Russians must be punished. The first and the third points don’t sound to me like a very promising start to the “urgent diplomatic efforts”.

Cameron urges Nato to admit Georgia. Nato is a mutual defence pact. This position will have gone down very well in Tbilisi, but do we really mean to commit ourselves to all-out war against the Russian Federation if something like this happens again? I don’t favour that approach, and I don’t know anyone who does. There is a bigger point here. If western hawks really are advocating Nato membership for every small country that borders the Russian Federation, even a government far more charitably disposed towards Nato than the present Russian one is going to see the move as a direct challenge. Constantly reprimanding the Russians isn’t the right way to deal with this problem. It makes us look pompous and ineffective.

Dave does have one sanction to advocate. The Bullingdon Bismarck is going to ban Russians from shopping at (or, as he puts it, “marching into”) Selfridges. Perhaps he thinks they are going to annex it. And why pick on Selfridges? Is it all right for them to shop at Woolworths? As a foreign policy, this is ludicrous. Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev are unlikely to back down because they have been banned from shopping trips to London department stores. Poor old Yuri Fedotov, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, will be inundated with requests for Selfridge’s branded goods every time he goes back to Moscow. The Russian cabinet will meet with little teddy bears wearing Selfridges T-shirts decorating the table. Will they be frightened of dangerous Dave? They are more likely to laugh.

There are serious issues in all of this, most of which were missed in Dave’s article. Much has been made of the Russian overreaction and the need for the Russians to leave Georgia and for Georgia’s sovereignty to be maintained. But there are two other overreactions which deserve rather more coverage and discussion than they’ve received so far. The first is the original reason why Georgian troops were sent into South Ossetia. Why did they do this, and why were they killing people? The Russian allegation is that the Georgians wanted the land but not the people, and were attempting something pretty close to ethnic cleansing. I would like to hear testimony from the South Ossetians and to see an independent assessment of what exactly was going on. If these were the circumstances, would it be reasonable (let alone likely) for the Russians to stand by and do nothing?

This brings me to the second overreaction, which is Cameron’s one-sided condemnation of Russia. The Tory leader showed no acknowledgement of the context or the history of the issue. Rightwing leaders in France and Germany are taking a more thoughtful approach, without being soft.

So it’s bad luck for Georgia that publicity-seeking Dave was holidaying next door in Turkey when the trouble started and not in Cornwall, as the British newspapers might have led them to believe.

This article can also be found on the Guardian Website.

Last year I sponsored Tom Clarke MP’s Private Member’s Bill which sought to improve transparency in where the UK’s aid money goes. And I’ve also taken this opportunity to raise these issues in my questions to Government Ministers. You can see their replies by following the links below.

In the past six months, I have asked parliamentary questions about AIDS/HIV in Senegal and Uganda, poverty alleviation in South America,  Burma ( here and here), immigration policy towards the Reer Hamar tribe of Somalia, and sustainable forestry and clean water sanitation in Africa.

The following is Nick’s contribution to a debate in the House of Commons on “Defence in the World”, in which he sets out his thoughts on the renewal of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent. You can find the complete debate here.

Nick Brown: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). When he referred to the danger posed to us by Russia, I at first thought that he was using an old Conservative party speaking note, but as he developed the argument I could see that he was referring to contemporary circumstances. My judgment of the current situation is not the same as his. The 20th century has not been kind to Russia and I urge him to try to look at things from Russia’s point of view, rather than from the point of view that he adopts, namely, that we always have to think the worst of the Russians and to fear their intentions. Russia is a state that is in transition from a very difficult historical background and we should give it a chance to make that journey, rather than always looking for the worst and asserting it as a new threat. I do not see the situation in the same way as he does.

The communities that I represent in Newcastle and North Tyneside have a long association with the armed services. As well as building warships for the Royal Navy at Swan Hunter and fighting vehicles for the Army at BAE Systems in Newcastle, our community has service personnel in each branch of the armed forces. We are particularly strongly represented in the artillery, the infantry and the Royal Marines. I identify myself and the community that I represent with the remarks made by the Secretary of State and the hon. Gentleman in applauding and honouring the bravery of our service personnel. Today’s debate is an opportunity to discuss what we expect of our armed forces and what support we give them to undertake their tasks.

The cornerstone of the debate is our membership of NATO, which I strongly support, and the question of how best to make an effective contribution to NATO, bearing in mind our other obligations. We need to ask what it is we are setting out to do. What are the budgetary constraints? What are the capacity constraints? Those questions have not changed. I was first elected to the House of Commons in 1983 and arrived just in time to take part in the great debate about the original Trident programme. My view then was that we should do what other European members of NATO do and rely on America’s strategic deterrent, and not duplicate it ourselves. There is only so much money that can be spent on defence. My view then was that our money would be better spent on supplementing NATO’s conventional capacity, which we were more likely to use, rather than duplicating the strategic nuclear capacity. I could envisage no circumstances in which we would ever use that capacity, let alone independently of the Americans. Back in 1983, that was regarded in the Labour party as a very right-wing view, because it was pro-American and showed both a commitment to and confidence in NATO. Unlike other recently elected MPs at the time, I would not join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament because of its opposition to NATO. I hold the same view now, and it is one of the small ironies of Labour politics that that view is now regarded in the Labour party as a rebel left-wing view.

All the key features of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent—the platform, the delivery system, the warheads and even the onshore-based support—depend in part on our relationship with the United States. The Trident II D5 missiles are leased from the US missile pool. They are manufactured, tested and serviced in the US. The warheads are US-designed, and several crucial components, without which they would not work, are manufactured in the US and purchased off the shelf. The system is reliant, too, on US software for all aspects of targeting.

I think that those working relationships with the United States are beneficial, but the logical next step is to integrate the whole thing into NATO’s strategic deterrent. It is the case for having a strategic deterrent that the British Prime Minister can fire separately of the Americans that has just not been made. No Minister has been able to describe to the House the circumstances in which the United Kingdom would be completely isolated from our NATO partners with only our deterrent to fall back on. The major security threat facing Britain is not an enemy state with a strategic nuclear deterrent of its own threatening Britain alone, but not our NATO partners—the main security threat facing Britain is terrorism. The Select Committee on Defence recently concluded that the

“strategic nuclear deterrent could serve no useful or practical purpose in countering this kind of threat.”

The money that the Government plan to commit to the programme could be more usefully spent on conventional armed forces and on specialist anti-terrorism units, which could do something to make us safer against the most serious threat.

In his statement to the House on 4 December 2006, the Prime Minister said that

“the investment required will not be at the expense of the conventional capabilities our armed forces need.”—[ Official Report, 4 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 23.]

I take issue with that view—the money can be spent on upgrading our strategic nuclear deterrent or it can be spent on something else. The cost of Trident in the 1980s had an impact on the budget for conventional defence equipment, and nowhere more so than on the procurement of warships and fleet auxiliaries for the Royal Navy. There are also substantial continuing revenue costs.

I remind the House of the words of Coroner Selena Lynch at the inquest into the death of my constituent, Mr. Anthony Wakefield, who served with the Coldstream Guards in Iraq. He died instantly from neck and chest wounds when a bomb exploded close to his Snatch Land Rover near al-Almarah on 1 May last year. He was wearing standard body armour, but not Kestrel kit, which has added neck and arm protection. The coroner’s finding was that Anthony Wakefield may have survived the roadside bomb blast if he had been equipped with Kestrel body armour. That is not my assertion—that is the coroner’s finding. Recording a verdict of unlawful killing, she said:

“it is regrettable that our soldiers cannot all be provided with what they need immediately”.

There are choices facing the House today. I believe that our first priority is the immediate well-being of our service personnel. We should ensure that front-line troops get all the equipment that they need—and that should be our priority.

Strategic defence systems do not exist in a vacuum. If the argument is that Britain must have an independent strategic nuclear deterrent as well as the security of NATO’s American deterrent, surely it is open to other nation states to argue that they, too, need a similar independent strategic nuclear deterrent. The hon. Member for Woodspring referred to the situation in Iran. Its near neighbours—India, Pakistan, China and Israel, and now America in Iraq—all have some form of nuclear weapon capability, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) pointed out. Our contribution is to say that we need to upgrade our weapons system and that Iran should not have those things at all. I do not see anything in that argument that would make the people of Iran feel more secure or less isolated. If ever there was a case for renewed diplomatic activity and for trying to find a peaceful way forward, surely this is it.

The real argument for Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent is not military at all—the real argument for the possession of an independent strategic nuclear deterrent is that such a deterrent is vital for Britain to maintain its “big power” role in the world, including our permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.

Linda Gilroy (Lab/Co-op): I hope to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that I can make a speech and deal with some of those issues. However, does my right hon. Friend accept that evidence taken by the Defence Committee suggested that it is not essential to retain the deterrent to maintain our seat at the Security Council? There are other strong reasons for doing so, however, as I hope to explain.

Nick Brown: I fully understand and acknowledge my hon. Friend’s constituency interest in these matters, and I accept what she said about the Defence Committee’s views. I shall make a similar argument myself.

It is also argued that the independent strategic nuclear deterrent affects our status in the European Union and with America. Although I think those are the real arguments that underpin the views of those who believe in the independent nuclear deterrent, I also think that they are the worst arguments of all. There is a pretty strong case for reforming the way in which the Security Council works and who sit on it as permanent members, and reform should not be driven by who has and who does not have nuclear weapons.

Our relations with our strategic partners in the European Union and the United States have very little to do with Britain’s military capabilities and everything to do with mutual self-interest, bound together by trading and commercial relationships and a shared belief in international conventions and the rule of law. Britain will punch above its weight in the world if we spend money on the threats that actually confront us, rather than on those that do not, and spend money on things that those who are poorer and more disadvantaged than ourselves really need.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning), and especially to follow soon after her kind words about the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not have the same difficulty in reaching for friendly words about him.

I want to make a brief contribution because I know that it is possible for private Member’s Bills to be talked out by their friends as well as their opponents. There is cross-party willingness to put the measure on to the statute book and to give it an easy passage.

Like the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, I am a sponsor. The measure commands all-party support and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Tom Clarke) made a compelling speech. The Bill is well structured. Of course, some of the information that it covers is already available, but it is not drawn together in one place and not supplemented with the sort of detail that we require. The Bill reflects great credit not only on my right hon. Friend and the team that has supported him in preparing it, but on the public servants and outside organisations—the non-governmental agencies—who have been involved in ensuring that we have logically mustered all the objectives so that they can be achieved rationally. This goes to the heart of the core objective of the Bill, namely, the millennium development goals.

The focus of the Bill is the target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income, which is already Government policy. My right hon. Friend’s Bill will set out the progress that we are making towards achieving that level of expenditure by 2013. It will enable the House to monitor that steady progress, but if progress is not being made, we shall be able to see that as well, as will the country. All hon. Members have been approached by our constituents on these issues. People of all ages, and of all faiths and none, care deeply about the plight of others, not just about themselves. There is a feeling in the House that we must do something to respond to that.

It is to my right hon. Friend’s credit that this private Member’s Bill does as much as any private Member’s Bill could possibly do in this area. Of course one could say, “Why not draw the 2013 date forward?”, but it is not possible for a private Member’s Bill to do that. We should not set impossibly high hurdles, then ask why they have not been accomplished. My right hon. Friend has ensured that absolutely everything that a private Member’s Bill can do in this area has been included.

 The three-year programme set out in the Bill will enable the recipients of aid to see in advance what aid flows will be coming, which will allow them to plan ahead. The Bill places an emphasis on the independent monitoring of the effectiveness of the expenditure, not just the total. There is no point in giving money if it is going to be spent on guns, palaces and other such follies. The money is for a specific purpose: to bear down on poverty. As well as having the generosity and commitment to vote the money, we should also care about how it is spent. My right hon. Friend’s Bill will give us, as parliamentarians, rather than the Executive, the opportunity to do that. For that reason, if for no other, I commend it to the House.