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Foreign Affairs and Defence

The hon. Gentleman has no doubt heard me dilate on that point in the past. We must concentrate on not only London as being vulnerable to terrorism but on our provincial capitals. I ask Ministers to think very carefully, although I do not expect an answer today. We must provide cover not just from the maritime threat but from the airborne threat, too. Interestingly, despite what we have heard about the preparation to counter the maritime threat, Lord West of Spithead, the Home Office Minister responsible for security, told Members of Parliament on the Select Committee on Defence recently that he was concerned that no overall body was responsible for monitoring maritime traffic around the country. He said that the Royal Navy is charged with keeping watch on larger vessels but that other organisations, such as the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, local authorities and the police have varying degrees of responsibility over smaller boats. Whatever we like to think, if the Government's own Security Minister is pointing that out as a yawning gap in our security, I would seek the reassurances of the Ministers that we have addressed the subject as seriously as we can. Lastly—I promise that this is my last point—we need a root-and-branch review of the special forces that we have available to deal with such a style of attack. There is no doubt that our SBS, our Special Air Service and the police specialist armed response units are first class. They have done sterling service not just in dealing with such style of attacks when they develop but, more importantly, in deterring them before they occur. However, by the time that the groups of two, three or four in which we have seen our enemies operating most recently start to operate in dozens, with two operational theatres being manned by our special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the crippling manpower problems faced by the Army at the moment, we will not have enough specialist forces developed, trained and easily deployed. The facilities are not available to get the forces that already exist quickly from one part of the country to another. The bombings on the tube in 2005 caught us with our pants down. We were lucky that the numbers of dead and injured were not hideously worse. I implore Ministers to look carefully at the new style of attack and the new volume they come in before we are caught as badly in the future.