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Defence in the United Kingdom

I am pleased to able to take part in the debate. Unfortunately, the Minister of State would not give way to me earlier when I tried to intervene about human resources. I wanted to make the point that when there are media stories and court cases concerning appalling harassment of certain individuals—women and gay and lesbian officers—in the armed forces, there has at the very least to be the most rigorous examination of the facts, but there also has to be action to ensure that the culture does not continue. It would be helpful if the entire report on Deepcut were made available, so that we could all be assured that no residual culture of harassment remained in the armed forces. Such reports and stories must have an effect on recruitment, and therefore have to be dealt with. The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) raised several issues about recruitment; clearly there is an enormous problem. Part of that problem is the question of rights within the service, but the disenchantment of many members of the public with the policies in Iraq is part of it, too. I have met the families of some of the soldiers who laid down their life in Iraq. Some feel very angry, some feel very bitter and some feel that the soldiers were misled into going to war. The atmosphere surrounding the question of Iraq has had a huge effect on recruitment. Clearly, many people do not want to face up to that, but they will have to face up to the sense of disillusionment with the policies in Iraq. I make a couple of brief points about Iraq and then talk mainly about nuclear weapons and the Trident replacement. In 2003 the House voted to go to war in Iraq to support the Government’s strategy there. We still have 8,000 troops in Iraq, and have lost nearly 100 British troops. Nearly 2,000 US soldiers have laid down their lives, and an unknown number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians have died. According to The Lancet, as many as 100,000 may have died in the conflict. It is perfectly reasonable to ask how much longer troops will be there, and whether the mere presence of British and American forces has not become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. They may be attracting insurgent attacks, rather than achieving a solution to the obvious problems. While we are fed a diet of news about the problems in Iraq, we are not necessarily told that a significant number of Iraqi politicians, including those elected to the Iraqi Parliament who strongly oppose—