On 21 March 1958, an internal note from John Henry Gladstone Leahy, a British diplomat in the Foreign Office, to the Ministry of Defence addresses the question raised by Sir James Hutchison, a Conservative MP at the Western European Union (WEU) Assembly, on the machinery for controlling the use of the nuclear deterrent. The note presents the British position on this issue and states that the Chiefs of Staff hold strongly to the view that the control of the deterrent should remain exclusively in the hands of the United States and the United Kingdom. There would be no prospect of the British agreeing to discuss the matter in NATO or WEU until the situation has been clarified with the United States.