---

Defence: Treaties with France

My Lords, I wholly welcome the Statement. If the European arm of NATO is to mean anything, enhanced co-operation between France and the United Kingdom is very important, but the big problem that we both have is over procurement. We cannot afford the equipment that we want and neither of us has a good system for managing procurement projects. The history of this is not very encouraging. The French did not participate in Tornado or Typhoon, while the Horizon joint project to build a frigate—one of the simpler naval vessels—collapsed about 10 years ago because we could not agree on the shape of the hull. The acid test of this agreement will be whether we can make a joint procurement project work. The noble Lord has mentioned UAVs, but that seems to be a research project. Can he say when the first effort between the two of us to develop a major piece of military hardware together will occur?