Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers 40-59)
Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy - Minutes of Evidence
The National Security Strategy
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200910/jtselect/jtnatsec/115/10032201.htmSession 2009-10
Q42 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
I take the point that there has been an improvement in three years which neatly coincides with my absence from the scene! - Lord West of Spithead: And my arrival on the scene!
Q43 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
"I really wanted to ask though, however good the planning may now be, we can surely all envisage situations where the scale of the problem, multiple terrorist attacks, say, across the United Kingdom or a range of other coinciding threats materialising, a flooding one coinciding with something else and coinciding with another one, where public opinion and practice would turn to the Armed Forces again, however much the Secretary of State would, quite rightly, wish to keep them focused on their prime task. I wondered whether the thinking on that has developed since the time of the last Strategic Defence Review. The view of the Home Office was certainly that they did not want to set up arrangements in any formal sense for that engagement beyond what already existed and I wondered if that is the sensible way forward?"But then again, there's more to heaven and earth. And let me just say "I love the Rain". I can't get enough rain. When the Olympic Village, Coming Terrorist attack and the Damned whole Militarised, Gladitorial Olympiad is washed out to Sea, I will be the one with the plakard saying:
"I've never had it so good, how about you!?"