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Trident

The whole purpose of the scrutiny to which the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, referred is to make sure that that is not the case. I think that my hon. Friend will find a reference in the White Paper to the costs of the existing system, which, in real terms, are pretty close to identical to the likely costs of the new system. The kind of overrun that he describes has not been the case with that programme. The Government have a strong record on defence spending. The last spending review increased the defence budget by an average of some 1.4 per cent. a year in real terms. The defence budget for 2007-08 will be some £3.7 billion higher than in 2004-05, and we have kept the proportion of GDP spend on defence pretty steady since 1997 at around 2.5 per cent. That is our understanding and expectation of the level of costs.