---

Iraq

First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his opening remarks. I am sure that they were appreciated by the whole House. I also thank him for his consistent support for our military, wherever it is deployed. He is entirely consistent and stalwart in that regard. I am grateful to him for that, and I know that our troops are, too. I first challenge the peroration of the hon. Gentleman's question, which was that there was something either dishonest or misleading about the information that was given to the House by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I personally take great, detailed care to ensure that, in relation to matters to do with both Afghanistan and Iraq, I keep the House updated. I ensure that every statement that comes from the Government keeps the House updated. [Interruption.] It is what should be expected of me. [Interruption.] ...Great care was taken with the information that the Prime Minister gave the House in October: that information and the plan reflected the best military advice. The circumstances and conditions have changed, and the military advice has changed. There is no question of anyone using troop numbers for party political purposes, but there is a question of troop numbers being used in the way that the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) constantly calls for, so that people have some indication of the sense of direction—particularly the families of those people who are deployed to dangerous environments. The hon. Gentleman is constantly calling for detailed information. He is constantly calling for me to come to the Dispatch Box to anticipate where we will be in a particular period, and to the extent that I am able to respond to those questions, I do so. I do not think it appropriate subsequently, when my responses are qualified by the conditions or military advice—the conditions and the military advice change—to suggest that that anticipation is in any way misleading. It is not. The second point that I want to make is that questioning whether we—the United Kingdom—have control over what is happening in southern Iraq is, with all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, not to understand fully the position that I explained in some detail at the beginning of my statement. This part of southern Iraq is under provincial Iraqi control, which means that the Iraqis have prime responsibility for security. ...The hon. Gentleman suggests that he knows that. The Iraqis have control. At the meeting, an assessment was made of whether the Iraqis could deal with the situation. I quote:"““Iraqis can deal with the challenges in Basra. Not only that, they should deal with the challenges””." That was General David Petraeus, who was present at the meeting, speaking in an interview on Monday morning with John Simpson on the BBC. The view was taken that the Iraqis could deal with these challenges in relation to how their army was equipped and the reinforcements that could be provided, and that they should deal with those challenges, because that underpinned the decision to move to provincial Iraqi control in the first place. As I spelled out, the nature of the challenges that faced us in Basra could be dealt with in the longer term only by the Iraqis. Day by day, the Iraqi army is better equipped, but, of course, there are still challenges. There is a challenge in the Ministry of Defence of ensuring that the Iraqi army can spend the resources available through its budget—that is improving day by day. When it is short of capability, we provide that as part of overwatch, which is exactly what we did. I say to the hon. Gentleman that in Iraq, and especially in Basra, what our troops do is as part of a division of the multinational corps. The commander of that corps was in Basra, and decisions about the use of our troops are made through the proper chain of command—not by politicians, but by military commanders.