Lord West of Spithead (Lab)

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his reply, although my question has been rather shredded of various elements by the previous debate. It is worth remembering that 80 years ago as we speak, the British Pacific fleet was leaving the waters around Okinawa, heading towards the Japanese homeland. It consisted of a mere 21 aircraft carriers, four battleships and dozens of destroyers and frigates, which were in the same waters that the “Prince of Wales” is in now. They were under almost continuous attack by kamikazes, which you could argue are the ultimate drone. Whenever we discuss the military, we ought to remember those who have gone before and what they did to enable us to be here. As for my question, I now have two bits left after everything that has been discussed. The first one is: does my noble friend believe that now might be time for us to review our nuclear doctrine? One could argue that it goes on all the time, but might it be time to do a proper review of our nuclear doctrine? The other one is: I had understood that major investment decisions—and this is one, bearing in mind the costs of having bases ready to take nuclear weapons and all of this sort of thing—were going to be made in the autumn as part of the defence investment plan to check out the national armaments director and the new strategic headquarters. Does the fact that this decision has been made now, without waiting for the autumn, mean that all the decisions from the SDR that we were expecting in the autumn will be taken piecemeal before then?