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Iraq

The Secretary of State must appreciate that one does not have to be partisan to conclude that he has presided over a trinity of national embarrassment. He has already announced a public inquiry into the apprehension of the service personnel. He has apologised for the media handling, but he has not so far commented on the third national embarrassment—that certain of the service personnel, when they were apprehended and paraded on Iranian television, chose to apologise for their behaviour and for the fact that their country had—[Interruption.] These are matters of grave public importance, because in the past service personnel have constantly been instructed as to what they should do when they find themselves in the hands of the enemy. Is the Secretary of State taking action to discover whether those service personnel were given proper instructions as to how they should behave, and will he try to ensure that in future, so far as it is within the power of his Department, British service personnel do not give unjustified apologies that merely embarrass not only the Government but their country?