The right hon. Gentleman is right. The Wildcat programme is of great advantage, and it is of considerable concern to the industry that its future is now in question as a result of the opening in a very open-ended way of the procurement programme by the Government.
I want to leave the Minister with one question. Can he say quite explicitly that the helicopter sector is an important part of the industrial strategy? If he can give that statement and commitment, that is rather important. This is the only part of the whole aerospace sector where there is a completely integrated system, from R and D upstream, down to manufacture in the UK. If that is lost, an industry that is crucial to defence and to the economy is lost.
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