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Defence Industrial Strategy

I am glad to confirm that this document does not affect in any way the future direction of the tanker project. We continue to have detailed and complex discussions with financial institutions about the private finance initiative side of the project; there is no real question of the operational requirement being changed. Far from backing off this project, at the last informal meeting of our European presidency—it was held at RAF Lyneham and the central item for discussion was the tanker project—I encouraged our European allies to follow the direction that we are taking.