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Royal Navy

I am not responsible for the policies of all sorts of groups outside the House, as the hon. Lady well knows. Perhaps she might want to think of a more pertinent point next time. On the subject of ship reductions, such massive reductions might have been expected if events since the publication of the SDR had shown the world to be a safer and more secure place—but it is not. The escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan, leading to the increased deployment that we have heard about recently, the continuing threat of Islamist terror, the Iranian nuclear programme, the North Korean bomb and Russia’s rearmament are all testament to that. The number and variety of operational deployments have consistently exceeded the assumptions of SDR, but what has the Government’s response been? It has been to weaken the Royal Navy drastically by reducing the total of its major warships, while disingenuously arguing that their replacements need be fewer in number because each will be more powerful than its predecessor.