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Foreign Affairs and Defence

In the past 20 to 25 years, we have had two through-deck cruisers, which are smaller 20,000-tonne aircraft carriers. The Government have committed themselves to two 60,000-tonne aircraft carriers by 2012. We are committed to that forward programme. Nothing like that was ordered under the previous Government. We have ordered the one of the best combat aircraft in the world, the Typhoon, previously the Eurofighter, which is second only to an American model. We have introduced an immense range of equipment and capital expenditure. Of course, we must try to balance that with the number of personnel, but the Opposition should not consider that the reconfiguration of the infantry division is merely a way of cutting numbers. It is not—it is a thorough reorganisation in which we have got rid of the arms plot and all the inefficiencies involved in training people for six months to a year, giving them two years in a particular role, then retraining them. I can assure the Opposition that that has been warmly welcomed not only by General Jackson and the chiefs of staff but by the infantrymen and women whom I met in the past 48 hours. It is a long overdue modernisation and reform of infantry battalions.