Letter from the Chairman of the Committee
(15 December 1999)
Defence Debates
There has been some talk at Business Questions
about the much delayed publication of the 1999 Defence White Paper,
the timing of the annual two day defence debate, and my Committee's
part in all this. I thought it would be useful to share my current
thinking about this with you.
We anticipate confidently that the White Paper
will be published on Monday 20 December. Clearly this gives no
opportunity for the Defence Committee to take evidence before
Christmas. Our plan therefore is to take two sessions of evidence
on each of 12 and 19 January. We will then give the staff and
Members a week in which to digest the evidence and prepare a draft
report. I would hope we could agree this on 2 February, which
would suggest a publication date of Monday 7 February. This represents
a considerable effort on our part to fit in with the business
managers' plans in view of the very delayed publication of the
White Paper. I hope you will be able to accommodate your plans
to ours.
May I also take this opportunity to express
the hope, once again, that the three other defence debates will
be more evenly spread over the session than they were last year.
While the Committee has no strong views on the timing of the Personnel
and "Defence in the World" debates, we have requested
that the Defence Equipment debate is not held before the Spring
Recess, so as to allow us to publish a report on our Annual Major
Procurement Projects Survey. I can see no reason why this should
cause any difficulties.
I hope this is useful to you in planning future
business.
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