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Iraq and Afghanistan Update

If I were to answer all the questions the hon. Gentleman has put to me, I suspect that I would incur your wrath, Mr. Speaker. However, I will endeavour to deal with the principal issues raised, and, to the extent that I do not answer them, I will write to the hon. Gentleman and place the answers in the Library. That will allow other Members to ask questions today. At the outset, let me repeat something that I have said to the hon. Gentleman on more than one occasion: I value the support that he and the majority of those who sit on the Conservative Benches give for the operations in Afghanistan and for their objectives. It is important to those whom we charge with the responsibility of carrying out those very dangerous operations that they know that they have that support. Let me deal with the body armour issue, because I know that the hon. Gentleman has a specific interest in it, and he has expressed a view in the media about it: 15,000 sets of Osprey armour have been deployed into the operational theatre, and anybody who can do the simple arithmetic required will know that that is more than the number of people who have been deployed into both theatres. However, that does not guarantee that there is a set for every single individual, because soldiers, like Members of Parliament, come in different shapes and sizes. I undertook that the new Osprey body armour would be deployed into theatre by late autumn, and I suggest that the figure of 15,000 confirms that that has been achieved. I now tell the House that there will be sufficient body armour for absolutely everybody in theatre by January of next year, but I can also give the reassurance that nobody who is deployed in theatre into a situation where they are exposed to the possibility of being under fire is denied the use of Osprey armour. There are more than enough versions of that advanced system of body armour for everybody to have them. Therefore, I am confident that we have achieved the objective that we set, which reflects the answer that was given to the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples), and that we will achieve our overall objective by January of next year. The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) asked a number of specific questions about helicopters for which, candidly, I do not have the information to be able to answer. However, I will have those questions researched and answer them in writing. However, let me say in relation to helicopters that the hon. Gentleman is of course right to suggest that we should not promise what cannot be delivered, but he should also be careful not just to read what the newspaper headlines state that those in theatre say about helicopters. The headlines relating to the alleged request for more helicopters were not supported by the body of the actual interview with the commander of the British forces; that is not what he said in response to the Prime Minister’s remarks. That having been said, we are constantly reviewing helicopter numbers, and there has been a significant increase in helicopter capability, particularly for Afghanistan. Along with senior members of the Department and my fellow Ministers, I am reviewing what we can do to increase the availability of helicopters not just by generating further air frames, but by generating the crew, spares and other support necessary to provide that further capability, if that is at all possible. On medical care, I point out that, as the House already knows, those who call for the reopening of military hospitals ought to remind themselves how we came to no longer have such hospitals. The defence cost study 15 of 1994 was responsible for the closure of our military hospitals, on the basis of saving money. In fact, in the light of developments in medical practice, closing those hospitals was the right thing to do. It is entirely appropriate that the best care be provided to our forces, and that is to be found in the national health service. As I said, we are seeking to provide a military-managed ward in an appropriate environment within Selly Oak. The hon. Gentleman associated himself with the criticisms that others have made of Selly Oak hospital by intervening in the debate in the manner that he did. If he is going to comment on the quality of NHS care, he should visit the hospital. I invite him to visit Selly Oak, to see the wards for himself and to speak to the troops, as I have done. I visited it very recently, and the troops who are getting that NHS help and service spoke with glowing praise for those providing that care. There has also been uninformed speculation about the way in which we record injuries and put our casualty figures into the public domain. It was suggested this week on the front page of a local newspaper that 5,000 injured troops were unable to be deployed on the front line because they were on an NHS waiting list. None of this is true. There may well be about 5,000 people in that medical category, but that does not mean that they are all injured. Some of those people are just being treated by their GPs, just as anybody in civilian life might be who was signed off by their doctor. The way in which we record and publish casualty figures—I am looking at that process, and I am prepared to consider the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion—has been consistent over the years and is consistent historically with the way in which British forces have published such figures. Of course, had we changed it, we would have been accused of doing so in order to hide something else. I am very keen to have a system that puts the information that we have into the public domain as openly, freely and quickly as possible, and I will do everything that I can to get to that. But what I will not do is to ask those responsible for the safety of our troops on the ground to take part in some sort of bureaucratic exercise designed to serve the purposes of people who want to make political capital out of those casualties.