Strategic Defence and Security Review

My hon. Friend understands that issue in greater detail than I do, but I think he is absolutely right. I know there is a lobby within the armed forces for such a decision. The Treasury's decision to transfer the cost of the deterrent to the MOD budget has been described by some as game-changing. If that decision is being taken, it cannot be taken in a hole in the corner; there has to be proper debate. The Government cannot do their business in that way. If they are seriously thinking about changing our posture, that is a profound decision for Great Britain to take and they will not get away with doing it in secret. We created our nuclear capability in secrecy, but we are not going to abandon it in secrecy because that is not the way of the world nowadays. Nobody is going to be allowed to do that. It will need to be done openly and properly, if it is to be done at all. I am worried that there is quite a lobby for it, which I can understand because people are worried about their ability to maintain other capabilities in the circumstances in which the armed forces find themselves, but we come back to the process and what the Chairman of the Defence Committee said: the Government need to do things in an open, embracing and proper manner, and not in the way in which they are doing things now.