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Defence Reform

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his broad welcome of the report and its contents. It is an important report and it is very detailed, and there will be opportunities for the House to debate it more fully, not least because the Government will want to look at some of the report's more detailed recommendations and tell the House how we intend to implement them. I was particularly keen that the shadow Defence Secretary accept the proposal for the Joint Force Command, which he has done. The command is a good way forward for our armed forces, and represents a strong consensual basis for moving forward on defence policy in the UK. Of course, we are all aware of the contribution of our armed forces—today, many of us would like in particular to pay tribute to the RAF Regiment and its contribution. On the right hon. Gentleman's specific questions, the defence board proposal is not a reaction to anything that has happened in the short term. This has been 10 months in gestation. Lord Levene and his team, including the vice-chief of the defence staff and the second permanent under-secretary, were very clear that we needed a simpler, more manageable defence board. It is of course fed by both the ministerial committee and the chief of staff committee, through the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Minister for the Armed Forces, into the committee representing other ministerial and the chiefs' views. When it comes to plans for the Army, we have no plans to reduce its size in this Parliament. On the 25,000 cut in the civil service, I regret that we are having to make reductions of that size, but we recognise that we have to do it to deal with the financial legacy that we inherited from the previous Government. However, we believe that we can make the cut while maintaining our full function. We believe that the best way to help the British defence industry is to support British defence exports. Finally, on the question of Libya, when we make statements about Libya we must be careful about the messages. Colonel Gaddafi and his cronies will be listening to the messages we send, and the only message that we should send is that we have the military capability and the political and moral resolve to see through the task that the international community has begun. Anything else would risk civilian lives in Libya.