Lord Dykes
Main Page: Lord Dykes (Crossbench - Life peer)(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Marland
I am not going to respond to the media interpretation of this breakdown. For those who wish to look at the official announcement, it related to the legal structure between the two entities, whether they would operate in the countries and how they would share the workload. Those were fundamental reasons for the breakdown. Of course the German Government will have views on this merger, as do indeed our Government and the French. It would be, as my noble friend Lord Tebbit said, totally appropriate that we should. It is important in all our national interests.
Lord Dykes
Will my noble friend advise the House, because although shareholder, investor and stock exchange issues were obviously primordial in this matter, and the apparent breakdown happened for those reasons, there must also have been some discord between the three Governments he referred to—ourselves, France and Germany? Will he take steps to rectify that in future to make sure that we have a more common position on defence requirements in Europe?
Lord Marland
The noble Lord should not suggest that there was discord between the three nations. There was discord at a company level, where it was decided that a number of the dynamics would not operate together. There is no discord between France, Germany and the UK in this matter. In fact, we have very positive relationships.