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Afghanistan: UK Forces

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and gallant Lord for highlighting a central point: that much concern has been raised by newspaper reports over the weekend. In those circumstances, it is very important for us to pay clear attention to what our commanding officers—the military officers on the ground—are saying. For example, Lieutenant General David Richards has said, ““Bottom line, I am content with what I have and I have the resources required to carry out the mission””. The noble and gallant Lord asks whether we have sufficient reserves to cope with the two main operational theatres that we face today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, we have the reserves to do that. We shall provide additional resources quickly if they are requested by the military commanders. I stress again that decisions on what resources are required in the field are not decisions for politicians to take. A number of noble Lords have spoken about helicopters. The noble Lord, Lord Garden, asked specifically about the eight grounded Chinooks. I wish the only problem was money. If I could get those eight Chinooks fixed by just throwing money at the problem, the situation would be much simpler to resolve. We are working very hard to find a fix-to-field solution for those Chinooks that makes sense and I hope that we can get that done this year. That is part of a general issue; on a number of occasions we have said to the House that we lack enough helicopter lift. That is absolutely right. We estimate that at about 15 per cent. As we have recently announced, we need to take action on improving the serviceability and availability of our existing fleet and on ordering more helicopters. I want to make it absolutely clear that, if we require more helicopters for our operations in Afghanistan, they will be provided. I understand that military commanders have already authorised additional helicopter hours, which was the point that we discussed in this House about a week ago. We shall look at options for extra resources closely and, if they are requested, they will be provided.