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Defence in the World

I say again that hon. Members may have heard what they wanted to hear. It was made perfectly clear—and I make it perfectly clear again—that all actions taken at any given time obviously depend on the conditions. What we were suggesting was an illustrative time scale of what could be achieved—[Interruption.] Be that as it may, let us look at the situation in Iraq. As the Secretary of State described it, further progress is being made in Iraq. I welcome that and I absolutely accept that there is a difference between the prevailing security situation in the south, for which we are responsible, and the situation in Baghdad, for which the Americans are responsible. The suggestion that, because we have different views and a different anticipation of what commitments we might need to make in the future, we are somehow clashing or falling out with the Americans is simply not the point at all. I repudiate that. We are allies of the Americans—allies in what we are trying to achieve in Iraq and allies in what we are trying to achieve in Afghanistan—but when Britain is so stretched in terms of our resources, I believe that we would be better able to honour that alliance by concentrating our efforts more clearly on Afghanistan in the future. I think that that is what the British public believe and certainly what our armed forces feel. The point has already been made that we should respond to what the armed forces themselves say and want—and they have made that clear to me and my colleagues again and again and again. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that that is the situation. Before we paint too rosy a picture of what is happening in Iraq, where there have undoubtedly been some achievements, we need to recognise that the situation is still very bloody and that people are still losing their lives at an alarming rate. There is still an awfully long way to go in persuading the Iraqis that what we are trying to achieve there is actually having any sort of benign impact. Without raking over the whole debate about how we got into the Iraq war—we all understand which side we come from in that debate—there must surely be some acknowledgement that pre-invasion planning was lax, short-sighted and superficial and that if we had made better estimations of the domestic situation in Iraq, fewer lives might perhaps have been lost. British loss of life, tragic though it is, has been mercifully smaller than it might have been, but the loss of life among the Iraqi population has been absolutely woeful. I sometimes hear the Prime Minister moving the goal posts about the rationale for going in, and talking about regime change and how despicable Saddam was—none of which was presented as an objective at the outset. Appalling though Saddam and his killing regime were, the number of lives lost was nothing in comparison with what has happened in the four years since we went in. We must remember that, apart from the inestimable cost in lives, the war has also cost a fortune in money. It is no wonder that our resources are so stretched. The war has cost us approximately £24 million a day, which will total £5 billion on 5 April. The huge black hole in our defence figures is therefore unsurprising. It is essential to remember what the Baker report said about the necessity of engaging with neighbouring states. I regret that the Bush regime appears to have chosen to forget that. I have not heard as much as I would like from this country about trying to get the idea back to centre stage. It is essential that we engage and form a rapport with Iran. I agree with the hon. Member for Woodspring that, even at the height of the cold war, we sustained our efforts and dialogue with the Soviet Union. It is vital to step up and sustain our dialogue with Iran. It is also crucial to engage with Syria and other neighbouring states.