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Afghanistan: UK Forces

My Lords, the noble and gallant Lord has asked a question which reinforces one asked by the noble Lord opposite, which I did not answer initially. In answer to this question, I shall be as clear as I can on the two related aspects of the theatres and the decision that has been taken. It is clear to me that of course at one level we must consider the operational pressure of our Armed Forces in the round, across the world, in all operational theatres, which we do. It would make no sense for us in the Ministry of Defence to do otherwise: you have to look at your commitments in totality. But we must not confuse that with a sense that we make decisions on one theatre related to what is taking place in another. Frankly, we cannot do that. We have to recognise that the situation in Iraq and the conditions on the ground require us to make decisions based on those circumstances. The pace of change in Iraq and Afghanistan progresses, and co-ordinating the two is not practical. We have to face the conditions in each theatre separately. But we need to make decisions about the deployment of our resources and be very mindful of the effect on our Armed Forces over the long term. We cannot go on operating beyond the planning assumptions indefinitely. As the noble and gallant Lord said, we are starting to see the effect on wear and tear of equipment. On where we stand today, a lot of careful consideration has gone into thinking about whether this extra deployment in Afghanistan can be made taking into account the situation in Iraq. We will have to respond to Afghanistan based on what happens through this year. We cannot say that being able to respond to Afghanistan will be done in a way which is linked to Iraq, much as we would like to be able to do. However, we can make absolutely sure that these decisions we take in the round can be managed by our Armed Forces, but we need to make sure that they have the resources in the long term for the commitments which we require them to face.