John Leech Votes Against a Replacement for Trident Nuclear Weapons

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 14th Mar 2007

John Leech MP (left) meeting local CND campaigners

Local campaigners have welcomed the news that John Leech, Lib Dem MP for Manchester, Withington, is to vote against a replacement for the Trident nuclear missile system.

John was met by members of the Manchester Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament recently at one of his regular surgeries. The campaigners presented John with hundreds of postcards from local people expressing their anger at the Labour government for committing the country to a new generation of nuclear weapons.

"Nearly 80% of local people stated their opposition to a replacement of Trident in a recent poll I conducted in my constituency," said John Leech MP before the vote. "The decision should not be taken now, considering that we have a new round of disarmament talks coming up in 2010."

John continued:

"The strength of feeling locally against Trident is overwhelming. Both locally and nationally, Labour are unwilling to have a debate on spending billions of pounds replacing Trident because they know how unpopular their policy is."

"The Lib Dems have calculated that the new system could cost over £76 billion. At a time when the NHS has record deficits, our local police force is experiencing drastic cuts and our troops abroad are being killed because of inadequate equipment, this decision seems absurd."

END

Notes to editors:

The government motion proposing a replacement of Trident will be debated on the afternoon of Wednesday 14th March 2007.

John Leech MP and his Liberal Democrat colleagues will be voting against a replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.

The Liberal Democrats' policy is to make all moves possible to rid the world of nuclear weapons as was agreed upon in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) through multi-lateral talks and eventual disarmament. The Liberal Democrats would postpone the decision on whether to replace Trident until at least 2014 and would reduce Britain's nuclear stockpile by half. This would be used as a bargaining tool at the next round of disarmament talks, which are due to be held in 2010.

Figures collected from official documents and answers by the Liberal Democrats and independent House of Commons researchers show that, during the course of its lifetime, a replacement for Trident could cost £76bn.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1877227,00.html)

John Leech recently delivered a survey to homes across the whole of the Manchester Withington constituency he represents. 79.57% of people who have so far responded and given an opinion said that they were against the replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.