Who's petitioning whom?

I'm not sure that the Government has quite got the hang of this petitioning business. I rather thought that the point of petitions was for the citizenry to tell those in authority what they think, rather than vice versa.

Here's an example:

E-petition: Response from Margaret Beckett and Des Browne

The e-petition asking the Prime Minister to "champion the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, by not replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system" has now closed. This is an email response from the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, and the Defence Secretary, Des Browne.

Thank you for signing an e-petition on the 10 Downing Street website, in which you asked that the UK reconsider replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system, and instead champion the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

We believe the NPT continues to offer the best hope of achieving the goal we all share - a world free from nuclear weapons. But deciding to maintain our deterrent is completely consistent with the NPT, and will not stop us playing a leading role in international efforts on non-proliferation and disarmament.

We know the British people want us to lead by example - we already do, and we intend to carry on doing so. Our weapons stockpile is the smallest of any recognised nuclear weapons state, less than 1% of the world total. We are the only recognised nuclear weapons state to have reduced our deterrent to a single submarine-based system. As part of the decision Parliament is voting on this week, we plan to reduce our stockpile even further - dismantling around 40 more warheads, or 20% of our remaining stockpile.

We are leading the way on non-proliferation and disarmament. We led international efforts on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We continue to work hard for the immediate start of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. Kim Howells, Foreign Office Minister, recently attended the Geneva Conference on Disarmament to urge faster progress and re-energise multilateral negotiations.

We realise that some would like us to go further than this. But it just isn't realistic to think that if we decided to let our deterrent lapse, or even completely disarm unilaterally tomorrow, this would make any difference to the efforts of countries like Iran and North Korea to acquire a nuclear capability. We believe in total nuclear disarmament - but multilateral rather than unilateral disarmament. We face an increasingly uncertain world. Given that we cannot expect others' nuclear weapons to disappear for the forseeable future, the question we face is: should we retain them, to deter others from using them against us? Are we prepared to tolerate a world in which countries like ours lay down their nuclear weapons first, leaving extremist or unstable countries to threaten the rest of the world or hold it to ransom?

Any decision involving nuclear weapons is a difficult one, with strong views on all sides. We respect these views and believe it is important to have a full debate. But, as we said in the White Paper, we believe the plans we are asking Parliament to endorse strike the right balance between our commitment to a world in which there is no place for nuclear weapons, and our responsibilities to protect the current and future citizens of the UK.

Robbie Millen

(Hat Tip: Tom Whitwell)

Comments

[Alan Summerfield]

The 10 Downing Street petition weg site is a sham. It's purpose is to give the public the appearance of listening and consultation.
For the petion against 'pay by the mile for driving' over 1,600,000 people signed it anf the Prime Ministers reply basically said 'I don't care, we will do it anyway'.
On this particular subject of nuclear weapons I personally believe that we should keep a small deterent but it should be totally controlled by the UK unlike Trident which I believe requires USA agreement before they can be fired.