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Strategic Defence and Security Review

I am seriously concerned about the decision that the Government have taken. They have not only scrapped the Harrier, but retreated from STOVL, going back to what is basically today's and yesterday's technology of ““cats and traps””. They have left themselves potentially reliant on two aircraft that do fundamentally the same thing, giving up the ability to use short-take-off and vertical-landing aircraft. This is about more than the capability of the carrier. We are giving up—not temporarily, but permanently—the capability that the Harrier has given us. We will have two fleets of aircraft that fundamentally do the same thing.