My Lords, it has always been the case that the nuclear programme has been at the very limits of our technological, industrial, scientific and cost profiles. The speed at which we produced Blue Danube bombs, for example, was excruciatingly slow, and so was the Beard process beyond that, and the other weapons. Now we have a lot of pressure from civil nuclear as well. Does my noble friend agree that we have to have a really national endeavour among all departments to pull together so that we can get the training of scientists and everyone focusing on this particular issue, because otherwise we will find it very hard to deliver—certainly within the cost parameters, but very hard to deliver anyway?
Just as an aside, when I was in government, the Prime Minister asked me to go and check on the independence of our deterrent. I was allowed access to all sorts of things, and the answer is that it is independent. Clearly, over time, over 20 or 30 years, that becomes more difficult, because of maintenance of missiles, for example.