---

Defence

May I say to the hon. Gentleman that, much to his annoyance, defence is a UK-wide activity? He would like to stop that arrangement, but I am opposed to its being stopped as I believe in the United Kingdom, and I see defence as a whole. I know that he would like to do something different and that under any Scottish nationalist regime defence would be slashed to the bone, at great cost to the people of Scotland. We recognise that we also need to continue to improve how we use our resources. We are aiming to deliver efficiency savings of more than £3 billion over the current spending review period and we are also working to ensure that we get the maximum value for the resources that we spend on buying and maintaining equipment. Defence acquisition is a complex and expensive business that all nations find difficult. Despite shortcomings, our acquisition system compares favourably with those of our allies, and we have already made considerable improvements on the system that we inherited in 1997. Nevertheless, significant cost pressures on the defence budget exist, which is why the Government have examined how we can make further improvements to defence acquisition, including through regular defence reviews, improved transparency and indicative 10-year budgets. We should not forget that over the past 12 years very substantial investment in defence has enabled us to provide the equipment and support required to conduct today's operations overseas and to prepare for the future, and I wish to set that out. For Afghanistan, 1,700 new vehicles have been supplied since 2006; we have doubled the number of helicopters in theatre since November 2006; we have more than doubled the number of helicopter hours available to commanders; more than £100 million has been provided for the Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Task Force; there has been a doubling of the Reaper drone capability; an additional C-17 aircraft has been supplied to strengthen the air bridge and improvements have been made to the Hercules fleet; and 22 new Chinook helicopters are on order, with the first 10 set to arrive during 2012-13.