Six ships were ordered, and transfer of custody of the first happened on 10 December 2008. The MoD's initial planning assumption was to procure twelve ships on a like-for-like replacement of a similar number of Type 42s, with the size of the second batch to be determined between 2005 and 2010. However this was reduced to eight ships in the 2003 defence white paper entitled "Delivering Security in a Changing World: Future Capabilities", following a strategic refocusing on "small to medium-scale operations" and expeditionary land operations. It was reported in December 2006 that the last two could be cut. In July 2007, Ministry of Defence officials stated that they "still planned to build eight Type 45 destroyers" and that "the extra two ships were still included in planning assumptions". This plan was officially abandoned on 19 June 2008 when the Minister for the Armed Forces, Bob Ainsworth, announced in Parliament that options for the seventh and eighth destroyers would not be taken up. The continual scaling back of the project, first from twelve to eight, and subsequently to six ships, has been criticised for leaving the Royal Navy with insufficient ships to meet its requirements.