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Defence in the UK

As my hon. Friend knows, I have made that point in the House on a number of occasions, and I have recently discussed it with our colleagues in Washington, Canada and Germany, because there is no doubt that it goes to the core of NATO’s continued existence. If NATO is to continue as an effective alliance, we need effective burden sharing. Communal security means communal burden sharing, so we need to look at a number of elements. It is clear that public opinion in Britain, America, Canada and the Netherlands—the countries with the heaviest load in the south of Afghanistan—is offended by the fact that so many caveats are attached to so many of the other forces operating in the country, even though they are our allies and partners in the operation. For example, the idea that some troops should not operate after dark seems nonsense to a country such as the UK. Not only do we have courageous and professional forces operating in Afghanistan, but our costs in terms of fatalities and casualties is much greater than for other countries. It is important that there is a wider debate in NATO, and I regret that the Riga summit in November missed a huge number of opportunities. It should have dealt with NATO’s role, decision-making structure and funding. Proper burden sharing is needed, and there are questions about how NATO should undertake greater expeditionary activity and who should bear the costs, as well as who should be responsible for the defence of continental Europe. Those issues are parts of the burden that must be shared and we should be clear about all of them. An incoming Conservative Government would regard them as a priority, and we are actively discussing them with all our NATO partners to ascertain whether there is common ground for a wider look at how we carry out that burden sharing. All my colleagues on the Conservative Benches believe that if we cannot achieve better burden sharing it will be deeply damaging for NATO in the future.