IN SCOTLAND we are very conscious that 25 miles down the road from the wonderful city of Glasgow the Faslane naval base houses the Trident nuclear weapons system.

Trident is a fearsome weapon of mass destruction. Each Trident warhead is at least six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of the second world war.

However the radioactive fallout from a weapon as powerful as Trident would also cause deaths and injuries around the world — even in countries not directly involved in the conflict. A number of scientists are also of the view that climate change affecting global food supplies could not be ruled out in the event of a nuclear weapons exchange anywhere in the world.