Strategic Defence and Security Review

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because one of the major advantages our country has is the number of alliances in which we play such an effective part. We are a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and an extraordinarily prominent member of the Commonwealth, and we are also a member of the G20 and all the other Gs. We seem to be able to reinforce that by our strong defence posture, which is itself hugely based on the training and quality of the men and women who make up our armed forces. We must remain proud of that, and we must do whatever we can to ensure that we keep that influence and that strength. While I would not go along with the way my hon. Friend illustrates his point, I do think we need to bear in mind where we want to end up as a country and work out the best way of getting there. In the Select Committee report, we express strong criticisms of the process the Government are now pursuing. We welcome the creation of the National Security Council and the expansion of the review to include security issues because it is increasingly impossible and unwise to try to draw the distinctions between defence and security that might have been appropriate in previous times. The world has become smaller. The threats we face are trans-national and the solutions must be comprehensive and cross-governmental. However, we now have a review that is being conducted by a body—the National Security Council—that until a few months ago did not exist, and at extraordinary speed. Our major concern, therefore, is lack of time. In practice, the timetable has been about five months.