Results 1-20 of 25 for trident speaker:Michael Mates

Oral Answers to Questions — Defence: Equipment Renewal (13 Jul 2009) has video

Michael Mates: Does the Secretary of State share my disappointment at the fact that we seem to be losing the argument about Trident purely because of the financial bill? Would it not be better if, rather than his giving us holding replies as he did today and referring back to 2006, we started an open debate about the strategy and the options—as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest,...

Opposition Day — [14th allotted day]: Iraq Inquiry (24 Jun 2009) has video

Michael Mates: ...cannot predict, that the inquiry will work in the same way as Committees of the House. I had the honour of chairing the Defence Committee when we were holding some very sensitive inquiries into the Trident programme. It was more or less up to the witness to say, "That is a question I cannot answer in public, but I will answer in private." We would go into private session when we had...

Point of Order: Trident (14 Mar 2007)

Michael Mates: ...The House will not be surprised to hear that I agree that we should keep it, although the arguments in favour are quite different from the time when we were debating whether to replace Polaris with Trident, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) said, and the case is not as clear cut as it was then. I want to explain why I believe that if we update our...

Point of Order: Trident (14 Mar 2007)

Michael Mates: Of course I shall be brief. The right hon. Gentleman was speaking so frankly that I wanted to give him an extra minute. He mentioned the proportion of the budget to be taken by Trident and its replacement. Does he agree that if there is to be a continual reduction in the overall defence budget, more and more will be taken from the conventional forces that he and I want to be robustly maintained?

Intelligence and Security Committee (3 Jul 2003)

Mr Michael Mates: ...not told things. They cannot be told about them because of their very nature. Some years ago, I had the good fortune to be the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence. Every year, because the Trident programme was being developed, we had to report on that and, every year, quite a lot of what we reported was not allowed to be published and had to appear as asterisks, but because it came...

Intelligence Agencies (29 Mar 2001)

Mr Michael Mates: ...for six years. He was right to say that there is a distinction rather than a difference, but there is an enormous distinction. We dealt with very sensitive matters; for example, we examined the Trident nuclear submarine programme, year after year, almost from its inception to its end. However, when a Government Department—or, particularly, one of the intelligence...

Security and Intelligence Agencies (22 Jun 2000)

Mr Michael Mates: ...a difficult task for parliamentarians, because, by and large, we are not involved in making the decisions that set the projects in train. My experience on the Defence Committee related to the Trident project—an enormous project, 10 times larger than the GCHQ project, which is itself large. The Defence Committee examined that project every year for 11 years, and I can state that such...

Nuclear Defence (14 Jan 1992)

Mr Michael Mates: ...or five years' time, it will not be an effective deterrent. Does one replace it or abandon it? The hon. Gentleman and I take a comprehensively different view of those two ends of the argument, but Trident is the minimum deterrent that we can maintain in the present circumstances, and will see strategic deterrence through into the next century. There is no other way that that can be done....

Nuclear Defence (14 Jan 1992)

Mr Michael Mates: ...Ashdown) once showed that he sympathised with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, having shared a platform with the Leader of the Opposition at a great rally against the deployment of cruise and Trident.

Nuclear Defence (14 Jan 1992)

Mr Michael Mates: ...Morning Star alongside the then chairman of CND—the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock)—and Labour's parliamentary CND chairman, when he was reported as describing the Trident programme as a monstrous folly which we should divest ourselves of as soon as possible. That did not go down very well with the voters in 1983, so like Labour—but more slowly and less...

Orders of the Day — Atomic Weapons Establishment Bill (18 Dec 1990)

Mr Michael Mates: .... Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) spoilt it all by saying that the Opposition would vote against this sensible measure, I was struck by how far the Labour party has come—in favour of Trident and sensible nuclear deterrence, for instance. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, who spoke with common sense, will still be alive after all his Back Benchers who did not hear his speech have...

Oral Answers to Questions — Royal Navy (5 Feb 1990)

Mr Michael Mates: ...State can give a better indication of progress with the new project than could my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. Last Session, as in many previous years, we published a report on the progress of the Trident programme. During that inquiry, we visited Kings Bay in Georgia, where Royal Navy personnel are in training. We shall update our inquiry again this year. Last week, the Committee...

Defence Estimates: First Day's Debate (18 Oct 1989)

Mr Michael Mates: ...the number of subjects in which we are now making annual progress reports. We attach special importance to our annual review of the defence White Paper. but we are also taking an annual look at Trident, the Royal Navy's surface fleet and the availability of merchant shipping for defence purposes. I hope that the House finds these annual updates useful, because they reflect the anxiety felt...

Orders of the Day — Comptroller and Auditor General (16 Dec 1987)

Mr Michael Mates: ...about that disastrous programme. Only a fortnight ago—again I do not offer this as a criticism—it dealt at a single sitting with three of the biggest subjects in defence — Trident, torpedoes and warships. Those subjects occupied for many months the Committee that I have the honour of chairing.

Defence (27 Oct 1987)

Mr Michael Mates: ...of chairing that Committee during the last months of the last Parliament, I hope that it will be helpful to the House if I relate one or two remarks to those reports. First, I shall deal with the Trident report, which is very short and to the point. The reply from the Government was even shorter and to the point because having looked, as we do every year, we found—not going into the...

Defence (27 Oct 1987)

Mr Michael Mates: I am a mile away from the right hon. Gentleman when we are talking about all of this being the fault of Trident. The right hon. Gentleman identified certain problems, and I am certain that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would not deny that the problems and challenges are there. However, unlike the right hon. Member for Llanelli, I may have something to say about one or two...

Defence: First Day's Debate (30 Jun 1986)

Mr Michael Mates: The answer to the questions posed by the right hon. Gentleman are perfectly logical and stand together. He asked whether we can afford Trident and whether it will therefore be the cheapest replacement for Polaris. The Select Committee spent 14 months discussing the question of the next generation of nuclear deterrents and discovered that this was the cheapest system, maintaining the minimum...

Orders of the Day — Defence Estimates 1985 (13 Jun 1985)

Mr Michael Mates: ...on it. If we have not got it right, it is largely the fault of Ministers and officials in the Ministry of Defence who have not shared the problems with us as we hoped. My next point concerns Trident and the nuclear deterrent. I shall skate over the argument quickly. The leader of the SDP made an uncharacteristically bad speech yesterday. I say "uncharacteristically" because normally he is...

Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister: Engagements (31 Jul 1984)

Mr Michael Mates: ...take this opportunity, in the light of recent statements by the Labour party, to reaffirm the Government's total commitment to nuclear and conventional defence through NATO, to our replacement of Trident as the independent nuclear deterrent, and to our continued support of our American allies, who support NATO from bases in this country? Is this not still the clearest distinction that the...

Defence (1 Jul 1982)

Mr Michael Mates: ...to the defence debate as a whole, just as it is detrimental for several hon. Members—doubtless there will be several more—to raise again, in the context of what has happened, the Trident argument. There are those who are saying that now we have had the Falklands experience we are mad to proceed with Trident. That does not change the argument one iota. The arguments in favour...