Military Aviation Industry

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 7:00 pm on 15 September 2010.

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Photo of Peter Luff Peter Luff The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence 7:00, 15 September 2010

It is the nature of Adjournment debates not to be too partisan, so I shall just spell it out in very simple language. The problem facing the MOD-the £38 billion-is nothing to do with international crises or bankers. It is because the last Government made commitments that they had no money to pay for. It is nothing to do with deficit reduction or the crisis. I could not be clearer about that. The £38 billion is a problem that we have inherited that we would have had to deal with irrespective of any need to address the extraordinarily large structural deficit that we also have in the UK. The £38 billion is a starting point before we address the consequences of the crisis.