asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether his Department is directly represented on NATO's study group on the United State's Patriot ground-to-air missile.

A NATO project group is currently discussing arrangements for procurement of the US Patriot surface-to-air missile system as a replacement for Nike Hercules systems deployed in Central Europe. We are not participating in the work of this group since we have no operational requirement. We are, however, actively participating in other work on possible successor systems to the improved Hawk and United Kingdom Bloodhound medium and low-level systems.