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Foreign Affairs and Defence

My hon. Friend posits something that envisages a qualitative and quantifiable watershed between the maintenance of facilities, whereby they are updated and rendered continually safe so that our existing nuclear deterrent is made more effective, and, a new weapon. The world does not work like that any more than one day we will have capitalism and the next we will have socialism, but my hon. Friend and I have argued about that as well. I do not think that the world develops like that. The reality is that the preparations necessary to maintain a nuclear deterrent in a safe condition, which is constantly updated to meet new threats in terms of accuracy and new technology, are an integral part of what might become—I do not say will become—one possible avenue for one of the many alternatives that we might have to consider if are going to update, replace or modernise our nuclear deterrent. That is as honest an answer as I can give to my hon. Friend. In the real world, there is no such complete gap. Talking of the real world, I have managed to deal with only three areas and I have been questioned on 15. If I may, I shall be much quicker in dealing with some of the others, but that does not mean that I do not regard them as major issues.