I knew that was what the hon. Member from the Scottish nationalist party was going to say; it was predictable. I remember the former leader of the Labour party suggesting to the good people of Barrow that they would be allowed to continue to make submarines, and could maybe use them for tourism purposes. Maybe that is the true version of the Labour party’s manifesto on defence.
I would take on board many of the criticisms and charges by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne if he came to this House with a mea culpa about his own Government’s role in producing defence reviews over time that were both over-ambitious and underfunded; if he accepted that when we over-sentimentalise our armed forces or avoid taking the tough decisions, the people who suffer in the end are the men and women of the armed forces; and, if he came here and acknowledged that the men and women of the armed forces who I served with who perished, some of them in Snatch Land Rovers, did so because in the end we overstretched, underfunded and failed to recognise that the best thing is to be honest, with a well-funded armed forces that we do not overstretch and with which we are not over-ambitious.