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Defence in the World

I think the hon. Gentleman knows that we are on record as having supported the aircraft carriers for as long as they have been in the programme. I do not want to get too involved in this, but bilateralism is different from integrating budgets. It is integrated budgets that gave us A400Ms, Eurofighters and complicated multinational programmes that inevitably become extremely expensive. Those are not the model for procurement that we want—nor do we want to share technology with other countries that are not prepared to invest in technology. I was talking about the inevitably huge cuts in capabilities—in ships, aircraft, ground formations and so forth—that would follow from flatlining or cutting the defence budget. If that fails to drive home the state of crisis in the Ministry of Defence, let us open Bernard Gray's "Review of Acquisition", published last year, which says:""The UK's level of ambition around capability is significantly out-of-balance with resources available on any realistic short-, medium- or long-term basis."" What he means by that, as he has explained in many seminars and talks since, is that if defence spending were to flatline for the next decade, the MOD would be able to afford its existing contracting commitments—and nothing else for the next 10 years. Just think about that: no new orders for defence equipment for a decade. What would happen to our defence industries then? I hear about this hierarchy of requirements that puts defence industries at the bottom of the Liberal Democrats' priorities: tell that to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws)—but perhaps he was not in the Chamber when that was said. As I recall, we heard the Liberal Democrat spokesman declare that the first priority was the best defence equipment for our armed forces, then the financial constraints, then the defence industry—so the defence industry comes third.