Defence

I should point out that there are a wide number of differences for us, because within Nato—this relates to article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty—we are in a different region from, for example, Israel, which was recently attacked. We have a number of layered approaches to defending our skies, including the quick reaction alert. However, the hon. Gentleman will be interested to hear that we are working with our European friends and allies on a European sky shield to do something along the lines of what he has described. It should be understood, however, that there are considerations regardless of which direction we take, because, again, the money can only be spent once, and we would have to consider what else we were or were not going to achieve in defence. So we use a layered approach, but we are actively working on exactly what the Command Paper describes.