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Afghanistan (Force Levels)

I, too, regret that the information leaked as it did. The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) knows—as I spoke to him on Friday and expressed my regret—that in my view the leak was in the interests neither of the Government nor of the work that we were continuing to do in preparation for the announcement. To some degree, however, I am surprised that his words did not turn to dust in his mouth as he was saying them, because information that has been leaked to members of the Conservative party about things going on in my Department is repeatedly communicated to me at the Dispatch Box. I welcome the fact that he has committed himself to ensuring that that stops; I look forward to discussing with him how to do that, and how to ensure that members of his party do not encourage such leaking. Sometimes the information put into the public domain—he knows that I have expressed this view previously—reduces the security of our troops and operation, and is not in the interests of those troops whom some people affect to support. The hon. Gentleman asked about equipment, and specifically helicopters. We are increasing both our helicopter and fixed-wing airlift with the increased force levels and tasks. On helicopters, we are deploying enhanced Sea Kings to fill the medical role, which will free up more Chinooks for the transport role. We judge that we have the necessary assets to meet the requirement, but we keep that under review. On all other equipment, including Warrior armoured vehicles, I am advised that the additional equipment is exactly what is needed to support the deployment. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we shall continue to operate at a high operational tempo for the foreseeable future. I am hopeful that, in at least one other theatre of operation, we shall, in the comparatively near future, be able to announce a drawdown of our troops and that, in the medium term, the pressure that those troops are under will diminish. That, however, will be a function of our ability to take forward that and other operations which I know he and his party support. We have to keep such matters under review, but it is not our intention to maintain the tempo beyond a point that is manageable for our troops. The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right to identify corruption as an important problem. I said in my statement that the support of the Afghan people for their Government and for our ability to deliver security is crucial, but it is also crucial that the Afghan people see that corruption is being challenged by the Government. Responsibility for seeing that through that lies with President Karzai and we remind him of that on every occasion we engage with him. He has recently appointed an Attorney-General who has shown a specific commitment to that aspect of his work, and it is reported back to me that he is doing brave and good work. On training for the police and the armed forces, the hon. Gentleman can rest assured that those of us in NATO who have responsibility for that training, and the Americans, focus continually on corruption, but I think that the problem would be better tackled if we started to draw some of those forces from the communities that they serve rather than continuing to do as we have done, which is draw them from other parts of Afghanistan and, to some degree, impose them on communities. Our ability to get people to behave appropriately in their community depends on the community accepting them and seeing them as coming from the community, rather than as imposed on the community. The hon. Gentleman repeated in his own words the points that I made about the need for the burden to be shared across NATO. The House knows my view on caveats: they are restricting the commanders’ ability to deploy troops appropriately where they are needed across the whole Afghanistan theatre. The sooner people remove those caveats and allow their troops to be deployed where they are most needed, the better it will be for all of us.