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Defence Policy

I begin by echoing the Secretary of State’s words of condolence and by paying tribute to the superb work of the men and women of our armed forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places around the world. We had a debate last week on defence procurement, so I will not go over ground that we covered then. However, I welcome the opportunity to have a broader debate on defence policy at a time when overstretch in the armed forces is a subject of discussion not only among politicians and the media, but, in the past few months, among present and former heads of the Army. We are having this debate at a time when, as has already been stated and acknowledged, defence planning assumptions have been exceeded for several years, harmony guidelines have been breached too much, and the state of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan means that a toll is being taken not only on the men and women of our armed services, but on the equipment. There are particular units in the armed forces that we turn to again and again because of their suitability and excellence in undertaking work such as that in which we are currently involved. I am thinking in particular of the Marines, the Paras and others whom we go back to again and again for such operations. Each of those units will, in time, need to rebuild their contingent capabilities, but they will be unable to do so if we keep sending them out quite as regularly as we have done in the past few years. I welcome the fact that the Defence Secretary began to acknowledge and address some of those issues in his speech this afternoon. He said that he believed that changes were afoot that would ease some of these pressures. I hope that that is right. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, and we will watch developments closely to see whether the hopes outlined today come to fruition. We welcome the Government’s recent announcement that they intend to reduce the number of our troops in Iraq in the early part of next year. That is a very welcome step in the right direction. The British mission in south-east Iraq has been in progress for some time. Originally, we had responsibility for four provinces; three have been handed back, and we are in the process of withdrawing from Basra province at present, but I remain curious about one matter. I assure the house that I raise this not to score a point but because I am genuinely puzzled, and hope that the Minister for the Armed Forces will be able to offer some clarification when he winds up the debate. As recently as 26 July, the Minister was discussing with the Defence Committee the prospects for reducing the number of our troops in Iraq. He said:"““The force is not self-sustaining and able to protect itself and do the other work that it has to do below about 5,000””." He went on to say that"““in an…over-watch situation we cannot get much below 5,000 because we have to be able to sustain the force and self-protect the force itself, so over-watch in itself does not take us down a lot lower than that.””" I repeat that I am not referring to those remarks because I oppose the reduction to 2,500—far from it. As I said, that is a move in the right direction, but I want to understand what has happened in the past couple of months that has caused the Government to make an assessment today that is different from what they were saying as recently as late July. Perhaps they have revised their assessments; if so, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s explanation later on. I believe that the work in Iraq is progressing towards some sort of endgame and that, increasingly, the focus will move to our ongoing operations in Afghanistan. In my opinion it is widely accepted that we are in for a long haul there, and the public remain somewhat confused about what we are trying to achieve. As a political community composed of all the parties, Parliament must set about trying to explain that more clearly if we are to ensure that the public continue to support and understand—and see the justification for—what we are going to be doing in Afghanistan for some years to come.