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Strategic Defence Review (Green Paper)

Until 1997, there was an annual defence White Paper, which was, to a significant degree, the public presentation of the product of the long-term costings exercise inside the Department, which reconciled the defence programme 10 years out. The absence of that process or of any replacement for it means that the forward defence programme is now bearing all the risk. That was enumerated by Mr. Bernard Gray, who said in his report that""the forward Defence programme faces"" real "financial pressures". I am afraid that the Secretary of State and his predecessors, but most of all the Prime Minister, who has been either Prime Minister or Chancellor throughout that period, have to bear the responsibility for this disaster for defence—that is what it is—and reconcile it with the worst fiscal crisis for the Government since the Invergordon mutiny.