§ Mr. Roseasked the Secretary of State for Defence what efforts are being made by him to standardise the type of weapons used by the various nations which are members of NATO.
§ Mr. MulleyI have recently seen the French Minister of Defence, M. Bourges, and the United States Secretary of Defence, Mr. Rumsfeld, for discussions relating to this subject among others; and I will be visiting the German Minister, Herr Leber, at the beginning of November. We play our full part in examining the possibilities of extending standardisation on specific equipments in NATO, the Eurogroup and most recently the European Programme Group, as well as infrequent bilateral and other contacts with our allies. Examples of current collaborative projects aimed at standardisation on which we are engaged are the Tornado multi-rôle combat aircraft, the towed and self-propelled howitzers FH 70 and SP 70 and the NATO second-generation anti-ship missile.