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European Global Navigation Satellite System

I very much hope that my hon. Friend gets an opportunity to speak in his own time in this debate, because he has such a valuable contribution to make. I should point out that the United States not only helped us win the second world war but guaranteed western European security throughout the cold war, and underpins the new struggle, which the new Prime Minister calls the new cold war, against international terrorism. I repeat to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk that I can foresee no circumstances whatever in which it would be in the national interests of the United States to corrupt the signal or to turn off or start charging for the system that it currently provides to the world for free. Providing that free system is part of the Pax Americana that it dreams of. It is part of its influence in the world. It would be contrary to its national interest to start playing politics with a system of that nature. As has already been explained, to corrupt it for us, it would have to corrupt it for its own businesses and commerce, and of course it would never do such a thing.