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Nuclear Deterrent

We have a number of ways of ensuring the protection of our deterrent and, as my hon. Friend says, he would not expect me to go into it. As for the Nimrod MRA4 programme, to which he might be referring, I must remind him that that capability was not available to us because the programme was already nine years late and the aircraft had not flown other than in one test that was abandoned for safety reasons. I am afraid that the failure of procurement over a number of years made that capability unavailable today.