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Defence Policy

I am grateful for that intervention, which provides some clarity. I hope that the debate will not be confined to the Army, but extend to the military as a whole. A comment was made about disbanding the RAF. I hope that that does not happen but we must bear in mind that aircraft have been divided into two huge sections. A small or medium-sized helicopter is under the umbrella of the Army, whereas a large-scale helicopter or a fixed-wing plane is under that of the RAF. However, a commander wants to have the full array of assets under his command. He does not want to go through another operational level or a separate cell to call on those assets. We need to consider such command structures. I want to consider the Typhoon—the Eurofighter. The first tranche is due now—I believe that there are 55 aircraft, but I stand to be corrected if that is not the case. However, they were procured during the cold war and they are air-to-air combat aircraft. I do not know with how many nations we shall have dogfights. Again, the technology has moved on, as has the enemy. We need to be ready for any scenario—for any development or future threat—but to devise an aircraft that has only air-to-air capability limits our ability to defend our nation. The Typhoon has great missile capability: ASRAAM and AMRAAM are medium-range and short-range missiles but, again, they are air-to-air. We need them, especially to deal with threats such as 9/11, but we also need the capability to support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there is a ground threat. We therefore need to be able to take out ground targets. The armoury of the missiles in our portfolio is not compatible with all our aircraft. Storm Shadow, Maverick, Brimstone and Paveway are our ground attack missiles, but none of them can be used on the Eurofighter. I wrote to the Secretary of State to ask what air-to-ground missile system the Eurofighter would employ. The reply was:"““Integration of air to ground missile systems onto RAF Typhoon, including the Storm Shadow cruise missile and the Brimstone air-launched anti-armour weapon, is being considered as part of the Typhoon Future Capability Programme.””—[Official Report, 17 May 2006; Vol. 446, c. 954W.]" That is not good enough. We simply cannot spend millions of pounds on 230 aircraft that are unable to share the array of missiles that we need because the technology and the way in which we conduct warfare have changed. Our Jaguars are disappearing, our Harriers are being sold off and our Tornadoes are coming to the end of their shelf life, but there is no sign of the joint strike fighter coming on line. Our ground attack capability is therefore questionable, yet that is the very capability that we need in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan has been the focus of many hon. Members’ contributions today. I had the honour to visit Afghanistan last week, and it was quite an eye-opening experience. The openness of the country was the first thing that struck me. Of course, there is a handful of major cities, but beyond them much of the mountain and desert terrain is inhospitable. Every so often, there is a river basin—such as that of the Helmand river—that is heavily concentrated with villages and towns. Such places are widely spread apart. A tiny village in Helmand province, for example, is extremely remote from what is happening in Kandahar or Kabul. That means that the people there do not hear the advice, the directions or the words of support that are coming from the Afghan Government. They are very much looking after themselves. These villages consist of tribal communities, and their loyalties are to the families and to the tribes of which they are part, rather than to the country of Afghanistan as a whole. Indeed, the word ““country”” should perhaps be used advisedly in that location. It is clear that, in that atmosphere, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are able to dominate and to work almost without feeling a threat from the NATO or ISAF forces. While I was in Afghanistan, I had the opportunity to visit the ISAF headquarters and see the co-ordination between the Department for International Development and other international organisations. I am pleased to say that our operations are working very closely together. There is no doubt about that. However, we are now spending about £45 million a year from the DFID budget and about £50 million from the military budget. Where is the accountability? Where is the co-ordination? I called for more than just one Minister to come to the debate today to explain what is happening in that regard. I also had the opportunity to meet General Jones, the NATO commander, and Sir David Richards, the general in charge of ISAF. Both expressed concern that mission creep was taking place in Afghanistan. On page 25 of its report, the Defence Committee states:"““We remain uncertain of the exact role which UK forces will be asked to play in support of the counter-narcotics strategy and call on MoD to provide clarification.””" That call has been echoed by other hon. Members today, and I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify where the line is to be drawn and what our involvement with that strategy will be. Will he explain how the division of labour is to be determined and who will take responsibility for these matters? If we do not solve these problems now, the move from stage 3, which involves taking over three quarters of NATO’s responsibilities, will be threatened when we move into the final stage to take over all responsibility for co-ordination in Afghanistan. Caveats have been mentioned, in which the Governments of countries providing NATO troops say that their troops cannot go into combat, for example. Too many countries are doing that and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) said, many countries are limiting themselves simply to providing troops in non-combat roles. That is not good enough if we want Afghanistan to work as a nation. I was impressed by what ISAF is doing. Unfortunately, the footprint that it is creating is extremely limited. It cannot cover the entire country. We have spent a lot of time focusing on Helmand, but it is only one of 30 provinces. The neighbouring province of Nimroz does not contain one international soldier. Where does a member of the Taliban go if things start to get hot in one province? Obviously, he moves next door to the other. Unless there is a larger commitment on the part of other NATO countries, we shall not be able to fulfil our mission. The mission is likely to come under more question—not because of what we are doing with NATO but because of what is being done under the umbrella of security that we are creating in the reconstruction and development programmes. As I told the Minister during our debate in Westminster Hall yesterday or the day before, there is clearly no co-ordination between the myriad international organisations—the United Nations, the European Union, the non-governmental organisations, and all the counter-narcotics agencies that have gone into Afghanistan. Their hearts are in the right place, but unfortunately the money is being spent as those agencies compete with their overlapping projects, and the lack of co-ordination means that a great deal of money is wasted. Although more than $400 million has been spent on challenging the narcotics trade, last year saw the biggest bumper crop ever: 400,000 tonnes of poppies were produced. That shows that our international effort is failing, and unless we do something about it our mission in Afghanistan will be brought into question. Our debate has been far reaching and useful, but there are many questions that I should like the Minister to answer. We have not really talked about the Sea Harriers, and the gap that will be created in air cover. We have not talked about the F-35 and the limitations imposed by the United States Government—or, to be fair, a corner of Capitol Hill—on the repair and upgrade of that project, which threatens our purchase of the joint strike fighter in the long term. We have not really touched on what will happen to the aircraft carriers, although there seems to be delay after delay with the announcements. We have not discussed the future rapid effect system. We have not even discussed the A400M, which was once called the future large aircraft, but now that it is so far in the future that we are not going to see it, that name has been dropped. We have certainly not discussed the NATO deterrent to the extent that the nation would wish. The Minister mentioned policy and I was pleased to hear about some of it, but we could do with an entire debate on the overlap of the EU mission, from a military perspective, with what is happening with NATO. A clash will come, if it has not come already. We need a debate on the procurement of equipment in general. There are also concerns about the future, on a wider and more serious note—