---

Business of the House

The contents of the report were not unfamiliar to me and I have been slightly surprised by the way in which this matter has been represented, because the report contains a very useful analysis of the way in which the Ministry of Defence and our armed forces prepare in the event of contingencies. I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that it simply would not make sense to keep all of our armed forces at the highest states of readiness all of the time. That would be absurd, in terms of their equipment and the impact on individuals. It is necessarily the case that armed forces are kept at different levels of readiness, according to the circumstances that they face. What the National Audit Office report concludes, in a complimentary way, about the Ministry of Defence is that for the very first time we have a technique available for identifying that level of readiness in order that we can then go on to improve it. That is a matter for congratulation, not criticism.