Strategic Defence and Security Review

I need to make a bit of progress, and I have a suspicion that my hon. Friend will want to come in a bit later. The economic context of this security review is one that we cannot ignore. Next year the interest bill alone for the debt that Labour has left the nation will be more than £46 billion—more than the entire defence budget for the UK. Unfortunately, defence cannot be immune from the fiscal challenge that we face, especially when other Departments face strict cost management. As the shadow team knows, the specific challenges in defence are immense, and that is in no small part due to the fact that it bequeathed a forward defence programme with a £38 billion black hole between its commitments and the budget put in place to pay for them. They sat there making future commitments in a manner that resembled a child writing a Christmas wish list to Santa, and they had absolutely no idea how they were going to pay for it all. So on top of the deplorable economic legacy that the previous Government have left, specifically in defence they left a £38 billion black hole—a gap between their forward programme and the forward budget, and that is the size of the challenge facing the new Government.