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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now a parliamentary vote on Trident has long been on the cards but a date still hasn’t actually been set for one.  It’s a divisive issue within the Labour party especially with Jeremy Corbyn, its leader, firmly opposed to renewing Britain’s nuclear deterrent and now the Prime Minister has been urged not to play party politics with the timing of the vote by a senior member of his own party and that man is with me now and he is Julian Lewis, Chair of the influential Defence Select Committee, a very good morning to you Mr Lewis.  How do you think he might be playing party politics with this issue?

JULIAN LEWIS: Well it’s quite simple and that is, everybody is ready for this debate and ready to go ahead.  The Labour moderates want it to go ahead, the Labour left led by Jeremy Corbyn have never been afraid to debate this subject, the SNP want it to go ahead, Conservative pro-Trident MPs which is the overwhelming majority want it to go ahead and the only thing which appears to be standing between the vote and carrying forward of the policy is Number Ten Downing Street and I think the Prime Minister really has to intervene.  I know he’s got a lot on his mind …

DM: So what are you saying is their calculation then, why would they want to delay it?  As you’ve described, as I’ve described, there is that difference of opinion to say the very least within the Labour party, why would they want to wait?

JULIAN LEWIS: Well the answer is this: later this year Labour will have its party conference, in October of course and they will then decide whether to change their position, which still remains a multi-lateral approach to nuclear disarmament rather than a one-sided disarmament approach to the issue.  They will decide whether to change that and go back to the days when they supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and one-sided disarmament and I can only assume that the reason for this overdue vote being delayed until then is that some of the so-called strategists who advise the Prime Minister are suggesting it would be better for Labour to impale themselves further on the hook of unilateralism.  

DM: So you see them becoming unilateralists by voting, having the debate and voting within the conference and then along comes the government with this issue in the House of Commons?

JULIAN LEWIS: Yes, the fact is it would probably strengthen the hand of the moderates in the Labour party who support Trident – and there are many Labour MPs who support Trident just as strongly as Conservative ones do, it would strengthen their hands if the vote was done and dusted before the conference because they’d then be able to say let’s not go back to what Gerald Kauffman famously called the longest suicide note in history in 1983.   

DM: It is quite an accusation for you to be making about … and it has to go all the way to the top, about the Prime Minister.  This is about the defence of the realm for goodness sake and you are saying playing politics with it.  

JULIAN LEWIS: Well I am saying that I want the Prime Minister to take control of the people who are perhaps badly advising him but it wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve had a situation of this sort because in October 2010, purely as what I described at the time a love gift to the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative leadership agreed to extend the life of the existing Trident submarines by at least five years until after the general election.  Now that was a terrible and unforgiveable decision because everybody expected there to be another hung parliament.  If there had been another hung parliament, even though the overwhelming majority of Conservative and Labour MPs support the renewal of the deterrent, the Liberal Democrats could have played off one leader against another and said unless you get rid of this one system, I won’t give you the keys to Downing Street.  Thank goodness that didn’t transpire but it easily could have done so the fact is, party politics has been wriggling its way through this whole debate and it shouldn’t.  

DM: We have no doubts about which way you will vote in that debate if and when it comes and just related to current events, and I’m thinking with reference to North Korea and why nuclear deterrents are still required.

JULIAN LEWIS: Yes, even if North Korea weren’t rattling the nuclear bars of its case it would still be the case that what we are doing here is taking a decision not just for the political and military strategic situation that confronts us now but for the next thirty, forty and fifty years.  That is the lifespan of this weapons system and we cannot possibly predict what threats will arise over that period and just as it makes sense to have adequate conventional forces in peacetime, so it is the ultimate insurance policy to have a minimum strategic nuclear deterrent such as Trident when we don’t know what threats are waiting for us in the next twenty, thirty or forty years.  

DM: Okay and a quick thought while you are with us, Mr Lewis, about your constituency association, several or quite a few dozen have actually written saying they feel slighted by the Prime Minister, after all their efforts during the general election campaign he stood up in the House of Commons and said when it comes to the EU issue, when it comes to the EU referendum, don’t listen MPs, don’t listen to your constituency associations, you make up your own minds.  

JULIAN LEWIS: Well my constituency association I believe selected me in February 1996, a long time ago, primarily because of the shortest answer I have ever given to a political question and that was, I was asked in the selection meeting would you vote to replace the pound with the single European currency and my answer was ‘Over my dead body’.  That is the view of me and it is the view of the majority of members of my association that the European federalist super state project is something that must be resisted at all costs.  

DM: So on this statement, on these words he’s used in the House of Commons, do you think he has been at the very least a bit thoughtless, a bit inelegant?   

JULIAN LEWIS: To tell you the truth I wasn’t able to be present for his statement so I didn’t hear it word for word but what I would say is this, the argument about an emergency brake on the payment of benefits to people who come to this country from other European countries seeking work is to my mind a total distraction and irrelevance.  I’ve got a very short list of six good reasons why we should vote to EU and …

DM: Well we’re not going to let you read them out.  

JULIAN LEWIS: … and that doesn’t even feature.  

DM: You still haven’t answered the direct question, is your constituency association cross about the way the Prime Minister has spoken?   

JULIAN LEWIS: The answer is I haven’t had a chance to ask them.  They haven’t signed this letter, I don't know if they were asked but one thing I do know is that the overwhelming majority of them will be voting to come out of the EU as should we all

DM: Okay Mr Lewis, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.  Julian Lewis there.