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Iraq

My Lords, I am not going to speculate about where government borrowing might go. As the noble Lord will know, the defence budget is about £34 billion for 2008-09; I do not have the breakdown of exactly what is being spent in any current theatre of operation. We are certainly operating within the UN Security Council resolution. However, as I indicated in the Statement, our ambition is to move to a bilateral agreement with the Iraqi Government—what I might describe as a more normal arrangement between Britain and a state with which we are collaborating to deal with the issues that it faces.