The Parliamentary Secretary - I will not weary him by quoting further from his speech of 7th February to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors - said on that occasion more or less that the Government needed the Bill as a contingency measure for the Next Economic Crisis.
Second, and more important, the First Secretary of State's continued presence in the Cabinet will be seen in retrospect as the first sign of weakness on the journey to the Next Economic Crisis.
Such improvement as there has been is of a short-term nature, which can easily be reversed by the Next Economic Crisis which the Government create.
If Ministers now say that, despite what has been said by the last Secretary of State, by NATO and by the Select Committee, they still believe that we have a credible defence, but only just, what will happen in the Next Economic Crisis?
Dangerously, the borrowing level already exceeds £2 trillion and may well be the source of the Next Economic Crisis?