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Defence Procurement

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. He is talking a great deal of common sense. There is absolutely no doubt that the sort of improvised explosive devices being deployed in these theatres will take out a tank, if that is what we choose to use. We cannot avoid that. Not wishing to teach the Minister to suck eggs, however, I should say that we had exactly that problem in the southern part of the county of Armagh in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years. Large IEDs were initially used against vehicles such as Saracen and Saladin, and were killing relatively large numbers of soldiers who were packed inside those vehicles. Our solution? We ceased to patrol on wheels or on tracks. We patrolled by helicopter or, more to the point, on good old Shanks's pony. May I suggest to the Minister that there is a solution to this problem, albeit not a complete one? We need more troops and more aircraft.