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Defence in the World

The right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) has just done an extremely good job in singing the praises of the help that is available to those outstanding men and women who have served their country. I commend him for the work that he did when he was in government to improve those services, and I commend the Veterans Agency for the work that it does. Members who serve on the Defence Committee are very lucky because we have the chance to visit our troops in the theatres where they are deployed. Although we read in our newspapers stories of poor equipment and demoralised men and women, we have the good fortune to see the reality. There are problems—as the Secretary of State was the first to acknowledge. We on the Defence Committee consider there to be problems with strategic lift. When we were in Iraq, we experienced problems both with lift and with armoured vehicles—those that we have there are old and hot. The pressure on our armed forces leads to all sorts of pressures in terms of reductions in training. On that point, I congratulate the Secretary of State on his constructive response to my concerns about the future of Bordon as a result of the defence training review. It is essential that the Ministry of Defence works closely with the community of Bordon to ensure that that review is good for it as well as for the MOD. I thank the Secretary of State for ensuring me that it will be. Despite all the problems that we have read about in the newspapers, when we visit our troops in theatre, we meet people of quite extraordinary quality and with very high morale, because of the way that they are led, the job that they are doing and the fact that they are extraordinarily busy. They also have better personal equipment than they have ever had, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster) confirmed in his intervention on the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey). The disparities between personal equipment and larger equipment are the reconciliation of the little debate that they had. Our troops are not only the best in the world; they are, I believe, the last remaining institution in this country that has the deep respect of the country and of the world, so they must be doing something right. Last June, the Defence Committee visited Iraq—we debated that last week, so I will not spend too long on it—and we were most impressed by the work being done in Basra then by the 20th Armoured Brigade and others. There is a real difference between Multi-National Division (South-East) Basra, and the rest of Iraq. We came away with the impression that the south-east of Iraq is not a hopeless case. The Iraqi 10th division were rapidly becoming more capable, and it should be possible to hand over more responsibility to them and to be confident that they will acquit themselves well. I welcome what the Secretary of State said today about the remarks last week of Ambassador Khalilzad, who reminded us all that we have two roles. One is to run and to hand over as soon as is feasible MND (South-East) to the Iraqis; but the other is as a coalition partner of the United States. For that reason, in that latter role the Defence Committee visited not only Basra but Baghdad. Again, we came away with the conclusion that the situation in Baghdad and in Iraq as a whole was not hopeless. We were impressed by the courage and determination of the politicians there, especially those who have been targeted and who have lost family members to terrorism in Iraq. They want to run Iraq themselves and they want to do it well; we must give them that opportunity. The question must be whether they are going to be able to do so. I am not convinced that the United States’ plan is going to succeed. I am not convinced that 20,000 extra troops will be enough to cure the grievous mistakes that were made in the first two years. I am not convinced that the plan is supported even in the United States of America, let alone in Iraq. I am dismayed by the wholly different tones of the Iraq study group report and of the Kagan report, on which the United States’ plan has clearly been based. I am confused by the British Government’s support of both. How can one run a coalition when there is such a completely different approach to constructive engagement with Iran and with Syria? I do not know the answer to that question, and we do not get one by simply pretending that there is no difference. There is one thing that I am absolutely sure of: we should not be committed to an arbitrary date for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, notwithstanding the utterly charming and delightful defence of his position by the hon. Member for North Devon. I gather that we have now moved to an illustrative timetable for leaving Iraq. The Defence Committee also visited Afghanistan, last July. Again, we met some extraordinarily impressive British people serving their country, not only in the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and the 16th Air Assault Brigade, but—crucially to the efforts of our forces in Helmand—the wonderful Chinook crews based in my constituency in Odiham. We also met the Apache crews. I am pleased to say that I had a hand in buying those fantastic helicopters some years ago. Little did we think that they would be pressed into the role of tactical lift helicopters, as we saw in that outstanding attack on the Taliban stronghold. That is only one example of the imagination and courage shown day in and day out by British men and women in theatre. In our report, we express concerns about national caveats from NATO rules of engagement. I repeat those concerns now. We expressed concerns about the commitment of other NATO allies towards an engagement for which they voted. I repeat those concerns now. My Committee will hold an inquiry into NATO to see whether it is doing as well as it could and what its future might be. I hope that we might be able to fill the gaps left by the Riga summit, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring rightly referred. The Committee expressed scepticism that rebuilding Afghanistan could be achieved within three years. I do not express that scepticism now: it has turned to utter disbelief. For all of those reasons and more, we will hold a second inquiry into the deployment to Afghanistan this year. To put it in a nutshell, I am becoming increasingly worried that we are trying to bring to Afghanistan the concept of the rule of law and of central government, concepts that the country has never actually had or wanted. We are trying to do that at the same time as we are destroying the livelihood of many Afghans. That is not a recipe for success, and we see the consequences in the radicalisation of British youth here at home. There is no sense of any co-ordinated campaign plan to win the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan, Iraq or even in the United Kingdom. On the way to Afghanistan, we also visited Pakistan, where I was left with one strong impression. It is all very well for us to criticise Pakistan for not doing enough to bear down on the Taliban, but the border is porous because, decades ago, the British insisted that it should be. It cannot be closed now because Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot agree on the line, so Afghanistan will not allow the fencing of the border that Pakistan has proposed. Pakistan has also deployed and lost more troops than the whole of the rest of the coalition put together. So before we insist on President Musharraf submitting himself to yet further assassination attempts, let us appreciate what he is up against and what he has already done. British troops are deployed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan. The right hon. Member for Islwyn mentioned the fact that they are deployed all over the world, including in Cyprus, which the Committee also visited. A tour in Cyprus is widely regarded as a sunshine tour. All I can say is that we arrived in Cyprus in pouring rain. We visited soldiers who were part of the theatre reserve battalion who were either just back from or just about to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our forces serving with the UN were living in appalling accommodation, doing their best to solve a truly intractable problem. The countries involved should get a grip of themselves and stop putting burdens on the rest of the international community. It is no sunshine tour. Of central importance to our future defence is the subject raised by the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown)—the decision on the strategic nuclear deterrent. My Committee is engaged in the third of its inquiries into that issue, this one on the Government’s White Paper. We intend to produce a report in time to inform the debate in the House, which we expect to have in March. As I said at the beginning of my speech, the Defence Committee is very lucky. We are truly busy, and likely to remain so.