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Iraq (Basra Incident)

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. If, in a city of 1.5 million, 200 to 300 people of a very obvious age range are involved in a disturbance, it is clear, by a process of elimination, that others are not. My understanding is indeed that the rest of the city was going about its normal business on that day. The hon. Gentleman’s point about media coverage is partly true. I was brought up to believe that the camera never lies, which is probably right; it is how one deploys what the camera produces that may well give—sometimes inadvertently—a distorted picture in its totality. But we live in an age of 24-hour news and visual news, and it is incumbent on us to accommodate that fact when communicating information ourselves. I take this opportunity to express my personal thanks to General Cooper and others, who, in very difficult circumstances, made themselves available to the media in order to give an authoritative voice from the theatre and to explain what was happening on the ground. I had no doubt, as I watched the coverage unfold on Saturday, that that was very helpful in shaping the development of later coverage.