I take the liberty of asserting that a meeting of this nature, whether in Loudon or in any great town—in a Crisis of This Nature, if I may use the phrase—is an important and useful event.
To throw all this away in the middle of a Crisis of This Nature, and to place the work in the hands of people who are entirely inexperienced, strikes me as a most absurd proposition at the outset.
When a Crisis of This Nature has been brought about by the Government, the rôle of the Opposition should be to oppose the measures the Government introduce.
In the last generation, when a Crisis of This Nature was recognised, emergency action was taken.
Paragraph 89 of the strategic defence review says that we can respond to a major international Crisis of the Nature of the Gulf war or to two crises: one on a Bosnia scale and another more limited, non-war-fighting deployment, for up to six months.
We must do everything that we can to ensure that a Crisis of This Nature never happens again.
It is important to recognise that humane and compassionate people can differ on what is the best response to a Crisis of This Nature.