Clive Efford
Main Page: Clive Efford (Labour - Eltham and Chislehurst)Department Debates - View all Clive Efford's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Fox
The basing review, when it is announced, will examine what we require in line with Future Force 2020 and the strategy set out in the SDSR, and it is only appropriate that it should do so. It is much better that we should have a clearly set out aim-point of 2020 and be working towards that. Given the shambolic budget and the deficit that we inherited, we all recognised that we would not be able to make changes overnight. In 10 months we have gone quite far in returning that budgetary imbalance to a more sustainable position, and we intend to do the same with the basing review.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The scale and pace of the cuts that the coalition has decided to implement go far deeper and faster than is necessary to deal with the deficit. Can the Secretary of State say whether those cuts are permanent?
Dr Fox
The fact is that there has not been even a hint of an apology from the Opposition about the appalling situation that they left behind. Nobody on the Government Benches came into politics to see cuts in our armed forces; they were forced on us by the utter incompetence of the Government who went before us. I also noticed that in the question asked earlier by the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy), there was no hint of what Labour policy is, or what the Opposition might do to reverse any of the cuts.