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Defence Policy

I will not go down that road, but I trust that we have the hon. Lady’s support for tranche 3. During debates on defence, Members frequently take the opportunity to pay tribute to the calibre and commitment of our armed forces, and rightly so. Members of the armed forces put themselves at the service of the Government of the day, and through them, of the House of Commons. Surely a Minister has no greater responsibility than that of deciding to deploy our service personnel in an active role outside these islands. When people join the military, they literally undertake to put their lives on the line for the people of this country, so it is right that the House should take an active and ongoing interest in the activities of our military forces, particularly when they are engaged in operations, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which significant numbers of people will inevitably lose their lives or be injured. I wish to focus most of my remarks on Afghanistan, but the House will be well aware of my strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq. It is more than a year since the head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said that we should"““get ourselves out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems.””" He went on:"““We are in a Muslim country and Muslims’ views of foreigners in their country are quite clear. As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited into a country, but we weren’t invited, certainly by those in Iraq at the time. Let’s face it, the military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in.””" I accept that the Labour Front-Bench team did not want to hear that, but there is still certainly a great deal of concern in this country about the invasion of Iraq. Many will take the view that the sooner our military personnel leave that country, the better. The background to our presence in Afghanistan is, of course, different. There was an al-Qaeda presence in that country and a consensus in this country that British forces should take part in any action to try to deal with the threat from terrorists in Afghanistan. The international security assistance force, or ISAF, in Afghanistan has been authorised by successive UN Security Council resolutions, beginning with resolution 1386, passed in December 2001. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State knows better than I, stage 1 of ISAF’s presence was restricted to Kabul. The international community is, of course, supporting efforts to extend security to other parts of the country, and the role of ISAF has expanded to cover the various provinces of Afghanistan. In April last year, the Defence Committee reported that the ISAF operation was made up of 9,000 personnel, provided by 36 countries, 26 of which are NATO members; that is important because the ISAF mission is now led by NATO. In addition to ISAF, there is Operation Enduring Freedom, the US military campaign that fought with the Northern Alliance to remove the Taliban from power, with the US providing air power and the Northern Alliance providing ground forces. The operation continues to work separately from ISAF, but there is collaboration: for example, the air power is jointly controlled. The House should be grateful to the Defence Committee for the work that it has done on the UK’s deployment to Afghanistan. To its credit, its members visited not only Kabul but Kandahar and Helmand province. In the past 18 months, the Committee has produced two valuable reports. The Government’s response to the most recent one was published just last week. The information available is up to date. Reading through the two reports and the Government’s responses, one is conscious of the use of two words—they struck me, at least: ““security”” and ““stability””. In my vocabulary, those are certainly not interchangeable. I regard ““security”” as covering the work done to back up the Afghan military police internal security operations and to try to facilitate some sort of rough rule of law so that people can go about their daily business in peace. I would reserve ““stability”” for the economic objectives of our involvement in Afghanistan. Those are hugely important, and a welcome and significant investment has been made by the Department for International Development. The Government’s response last week to the Committee report rightly makes a strong statement about the work of DFID, although that is not in any way to criticise the work of the Ministry of Defence. It simply means that it is right that DFID has got in so strongly and, as the Government said,"““ensured that all of its interventions have been in close consultation with the Afghan government and civil society at the provincial level and increasingly with an Afghan lead, including in the design and construction stages. This approach has demonstrated to local communities that their Government can deliver improved basic services and demonstrated the longer-term commitment of the international community.””" I do not think that there is any concern about the support for the economic—and, some would say, the social—development of Afghanistan. I assume that the House is united in the hope that security might be achieved within a reasonable time scale and that the cost in lost life, whether of military personnel or the Afghan population, is kept to an absolute minimum. There is agreement throughout the House on that. It is right that we should look carefully at what is happening in Afghanistan. Reference has already been made to the position regarding the growth of poppies. The reality is that there are many poppy producers. The Select Committee’s report does not refer much to the producers but rather to the next stages, which are easier to address. I am well aware that it is not the Government’s policy to allow the military to get involved in any of the eradication process. Indeed, the report makes the position clear:"““The MOD…will not take part in the eradication of poppy until alternative livelihood schemes are available.””" The problem is that we have to accept, as my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr. Hamilton) said, that producers will move to alternative systems of production only when, in the long term and the short term, it is profitable for them to do so. These people are working on the land and trying to support themselves and their families. The idea that there is a military solution through eradicating the poppy crop, with the involvement of the British Government and our people, is quite wrong. Indeed, the more I study the report and the Government’s response, the more sceptical I become of the entire commitment. If one looks carefully at the original terms of reference given in relation to the Government’s participation in ISAF, even subsequently when we moved into Helmand province, one sees that part of our presence in Afghanistan is an involvement in dealing with the narcotics issue. This is not said in any spirit of criticism. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that when he tries to justify our presence in Afghanistan to his constituents, he sometimes refers to the drugs link. I have made my position on this clear on previous occasions in the House of Commons. As far as I am concerned, our responsibility in relation to drugs is to deal with consumption. The reality is that there is too much consumption of illegal drugs. It is all very well saying that a certain proportion of drugs is produced in Afghanistan, as if poppies are grown only in Afghanistan, but it is not credible to imply that any significant contribution can be made to the drugs situation in that country by our military presence there. I put that forward as the point of view of someone who naturally wants to see our forces succeed, by and large, throughout the world, as does everyone else in this House, if we agree that they should have been deployed.