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Defence Policy

It is a pleasure to be called towards the end of this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott), who spoke thoughtfully and passionately about our debt of gratitude to our armed forces. I am sure that we all share those thoughts. I join my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) in saying that we have had an interesting, thoughtful and provocative debate, but I am afraid that it has been far too wide ranging. We have managed to cover subjects as diverse as Army barracks, the joint strike fighter, operations in Iraq and the nuclear deterrent, not to mention all the other issues that are so important to us as individual Members or to the nation as a whole. We cannot go into all those areas in sufficient depth in the course of one afternoon’s debate. I hope that the Minister and the usual channels will bear in mind that we need properly to analyse the decisions made by Government and scrutinised by Parliament.