1.  At our request, the Government extended the period of time available to Parliament to scrutinise the UK/US Defence Trade Co-operation Treaty. This allowed us to conduct an inquiry into the Treaty. In November 2007 we took evidence from defence companies as well as the MoD and the Cabinet Office and published our report in December 2007 which recommended early ratification of the Treaty. (Paragraph 10)

2.  The MoD was extremely slow in responding to our request for written evidence on our inquiry into UK Defence: commitments and resources and this significantly delayed our inquiry. (Paragraph 17)

3.  Unusually, because of the classified nature of the material presented to us, we had to conduct our evidence sessions for our inquiry into The Iran hostages incident in private. We had some reservations about conducting scrutiny on terms of the Government's choosing. (Paragraph 26)

4.  We concluded that the Fulton Report, and the evidence provided to us in support of it, contained a depth of operational detail which it would have been damaging to have made public. This made it difficult for us to demonstrate openly the grounds on which we reached our conclusions. In our report, we assured the House of Commons that we had scrutinised the report thoroughly and we wrote to the Secretary of State for Defence with a number of classified conclusions and recommendations. (Paragraph 28)

5.  We have expressed concern that the reduction in the number of Defence Agencies may lead to a loss of transparency and Parliamentary accountability. (Paragraph 38)

6.  In 2007, as in 2006, we visited UK Forces on deployment in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Visiting our troops wherever they are deployed is crucial to our understanding of the conditions in which our Armed Forces operate. (Paragraph 61)

7.  For the future, we would hope that the Government's responses will deal more fully with the whole argument contained in the report, and not restrict themselves to the bold recommendations and conclusions; and it would be pleasing if they could be more generous in acknowledging where our inquiries have contributed to changes in Government policy. (Paragraph 71)