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Strategic Defence and Security Review

My Lords, many of us will have found it very difficult to listen to the chastisements that my noble friend has received from the other side of the House when some noble Lords here bear a very heavy responsibility for the mess that we are now in. Previous Ministers placed orders with money that they did not have. That now threatens employment and has made inevitable the Statement which my noble friend has had to repeat today. Anybody who studied this matter with any interest knew that, once those carriers were ordered—I think that it was in the time of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson—it became a shambolic programme from then on. We still do not have any carriers. Everybody knew the pressure, problems and lumpiness that it would create for the naval budget. The difficulties that my noble friend and the Prime Minister have had to cope with are simply enormous. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, will know that his strategic defence review never said that we were going to be in Afghanistan or that we were going to fight a second Iraq war. The then Government made no adequate attempt to adjust the policy and the resources to meet those new demands. We now have to get the resources in place based on our best estimate of the risks that we face and then, if the situation changes and the unexpected happens, be ready to change as well.