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Defence in the World

I desperately hope that my hon. Friend is right. I feel that if the public are asked whether they think the armed forces are being treated unfairly, they will reply with a resounding yes, but if they are asked whether they want funding for the new ward in their local hospital to be cut in order to provide more for the armed forces, I suspect that they will be much less certain in their answer. I believe that we have to take the argument over this question out to the public, because they need to understand the issues the country is facing. When it comes to the current team of Defence Ministers—it is an excellent team, incidentally—I have a suspicion, although none of them have told me so, that they are desperately hoping that they lose the next election because some of the decisions that they would otherwise have to take would, largely because of the lack of money, be so awful. They know that we are in deep trouble.