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European Union Bill

I cannot recollect using the word ““trivial””, to be quite honest. The key point we were trying to make is that, when he talks about a common defence as though we were going to pool all our military and have a common air force and a common army and all the rest, that is a complete straw man. That is not what anyone on the continent is proposing. The real issues in European defence are ones such as why we have—I cannot remember the precise figure—400,000 people under arms yet we can manage to mobilise only 5,000 for a particular operation and why, in terms of bang for the buck, Europe is so unbelievably inefficient, given all the different national procurement systems. When we are up against it on the defence budget, the Government are saying they are not interested in common procurement and how we make that work. What we are talking about is very small-scale, step-by-step, gradual changes that would be useful, not suddenly deciding that we want to have a common army and a common air force. It is ludicrous to say that the Opposition are in favour of that.