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Iraq

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for notice of it. I echo his words of condolence in respect of the nine servicemen who have lost their lives and those who have been injured. The media coverage of this sorry affair has been a national embarrassment and the judgment that it would be right to allow those people to sell their stories has hardly been vindicated by the sort of reports that we have seen of one in particular complaining that he had had his iPod taken away and that his Iranian captors had called him Mr. Bean. That is not something that has covered the nation in glory around the world. The House will note that the Secretary of State has accepted some responsibility for those judgments. The greater issues that need attention, and the questions that need to be asked now, relate not to the media coverage but to the original incident itself. Why was there inadequate cover? Why did the helicopter go back to the boat? Why, given that we are part of a coalition, were no other air assets available to help? Why were no other boats on hand? I understand that HMS Cornwall could not go in, but there are many craft between a RIB and HMS Cornwall. Why was no other support available in the sea? Following the previous incident, what sort of risk assessment had been made, and what lessons were learned? Those are the sort of questions that the Secretary of State tells us will be addressed by the inquiry. We note that that has been set up by the Chief of the Defence Staff and is to be conducted by a former head of the Marines. Would it not be a valuable addition to have some political input, perhaps from Privy Councillors with relevant experience in that area. It is those questions about what happened on 23 March that need to be answered and which should determine the fate of the Secretary of State for Defence. It would not be right for him to resign his post over the media coverage of those events while the Prime Minister and Cabinet who led us into the most disastrous foreign intervention in 50 years remained in post.