Action Against Houthi Maritime Attacks

My Lords, the large-scale attack we made first of all was never going to stop the Houthis making their attacks, as the Minister said; it was going to degrade only. Indeed, post then, the Americans have made a number of strikes in retaliation when weapons have been fired at them. The attack we are talking about now will hopefully degrade the capabilities of the Houthis to attack innocent shipping even more. I fear that the shipping companies seem to be showing a huge reluctance to think about getting back in the Red Sea, even though the Houthis have been degraded, and I can understand that. Therefore, this is likely to be quite a long, ongoing operation. It is quite right that we are enacting the rules of self-defence, and it is very good if you can do that immediately. In other words, when someone fires something from the shore at you, you hit where they fired at you from. That is why the Americans have been making these responses. One of our problems is that our aircraft are attacking from Cyprus, as the noble and gallant Lord said, several thousand miles away from this operation. Is the Minister surprised that we have not put an aircraft carrier there, because one could then respond immediately to these things and put that much more pressure on their ability to fire weapons at us? Having said all that, it is absolutely right what we are doing: freedom of navigation is so crucial to our nation.