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Defence in the World

It was clear at the time that the Prime Minister believed that the situation in Iraq was such that it enabled us, and made it sensible for us, to reduce the number of troops from between 4,000 and 5,000 to 2,500. One can readily understand how in certain circumstances that would be a reasonable thing to do. Obviously, it would be desirable if it were possible to do that without jeopardising the success of the operation. Matters have become more complicated since then, however. It has become important to support the Americans during their surge and the al-Maliki Administration in Baghdad in trying to gain control of the country. It is very much a matter of psychology. The events in Baghdad and Basra over the past few months have shown how difficult things are. The Iraqi forces initially ran into quite a lot of trouble and bother. It was sensible to decide that this was not the moment to reduce further our forces in Iraq. I listen with great interest to the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, and often learn a lot from him, but I did not follow what he said today, which was to the effect that we could either have a viable critical mass in Iraq of 4,000 to 5,000 troops or have 500 or fewer. Things do not work like that. It may be possible to go down to a lower level of troops provided that there is a commensurate reduction in the threat. Clearly, if there is no threat, we do not need any force protection. Presumably, those are the circumstances in which he envisaged having a small training programme, or something, involving a few hundred of our troops. I would have thought that if there were a threat to them, they would need their own force protection, which would require a number of troops being available substantially in advance of that. It may well be that the Prime Minister felt last autumn that we were moving towards that situation. Clearly, we are not, but that does not mean to say that over the long term we will not succeed in making a considerable success of the operation. Perhaps in five or 10 years' time, if we can withdraw from an Iraq that is reasonably stable—if it is, for the first time in its history, a democratic country—we will be able to look back with pride on having kept our nerve despite the obvious and understandable public pressures to throw in the sponge and pull out prematurely. The second thing on which I want to congratulate the Government is quite remarkable: the number of initiatives that they have taken in the past year or two to provide material support for our troops. There has been an announcement in short order of two armed forces pay reviews, which have been accepted by the Government. I think that the results of those public sector pay reviews are the only ones to have been accepted. The one last year increased the pay of people in the lower ranks by 9 per cent. That is real money, frankly. At the same time, we have had the introduction of the tax-free deployment allowance and concessions on council tax, and rightly so, but they are without precedent. Commitments have been given to spend more money on improving housing, and it is very important that that be done. I will not make a party political point by saying who is actually to blame for the present administration and ownership of military housing in this country. Instructions have been given to health authorities to do what they really should have been doing automatically since 1948 and the introduction of the health service—to give priority to patients presenting with symptoms as a result of service in our armed forces. I have left out several things, such as the significant increase in the compensation limit. There has been an enormous number of initiatives in this field. It is a remarkable record of achievement, and as far as I can see the Government have got absolutely no credit for it whatever. I suppose that it is not surprising that they were given no credit from the Opposition Benches—party politics comes into issues even as important as this—but the media have not picked up at all on these points. However, there is no doubt that the armed forces are aware of the continuing effort. Thirdly, the Government have also made tremendous progress in addressing the issue of the equipment of our forces deployed on these difficult operations. There is no doubt that, as often happens when one suddenly has to send an expeditionary force to an entirely new combat zone thousands of miles away, there are bound to be deficiencies. I suppose that there has never been a case in history of a country deploying such an expeditionary force far from home and at short notice, and there not being severe deficiencies in the personal and other forms of fighting equipment, and people not having what they ideally would have liked in those difficult circumstances. However, that issue has now been addressed, and very creditably so. The urgent operational requirements system is really working, and we are getting equipment out to Afghanistan and Iraq within a few months of the requirement being identified by the military on the spot. In the past few months, I have had the opportunity to speak to more than 300 serving men and women in this country, many of whom had just recently returned from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. The universal view of everyone whom I asked about personal equipment—I ask that question on every occasion, as you can imagine, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because this is a live issue often debated in the House—was that the equipment now available to them in Iraq and Afghanistan is absolutely second to none, including to that of their American counterparts. They were very conscious of that point. That is another considerable achievement on the part of the Government. Unfortunately, because of the delays in coroners' inquests, coroners' judgments are still being made about the unfortunate deaths of our servicemen and women from three years ago. The Government have taken steps to spread out the inquests across the country, so those delays will now decline. References to the inadequacies of personal equipment are at least three years out of date. The tabloids pick up on that and present it as a current story—as a reflection of current reality—when in fact, that position ceased to exist some years ago. That is completely unjust and unfair, and needs to be corrected. The fourth and final issue that I want to address and that was raised by the Secretary of State is the quite different one of anti-ballistic missile defence. I totally agreed with what he said: the Government are absolutely right to renew and update our co-operation with the Americans on this subject, giving them the benefit of the output at Menwith Hill and Fylingdales. The Government are also right to keep the matter under review. I do not want to draw any conclusions as to what we should be doing over the next few years in this area, but it is a very serious problem. The fact is that the Iranians are investing in ballistic technology to an extraordinary degree. They have developed the Shahab 2 missile and are now developing the Shahab 3, with which they can potentially already achieve a range of more than 1,000 km. One has to ask why they are doing that. If we believe last December's American defence community report—it said that the Iranians abandoned their nuclear weapons programme in 2003, which would be very good news indeed—we have to ask what other kind of payload the Shahab 3s are designed to carry. Presumably, it is biological or chemical weapons—weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ahmadinejad may be a lunatic but even he cannot be quite so mad as to spend this vast amount of money in developing ballistic missiles simply in order to carry high explosive. The cost-impact ratio would be utterly ridiculous by any standards. There is a real threat and problem there. The Secretary of State is right that, for the foreseeable future, we need not think about locating terrestrial land-based anti-ballistic missile systems in this country. But I am reassured that the Americans are in agreement with the Polish and Czech Governments on locating systems there. We should keep the matter under constant review and come back to it from time to time in the House. I appreciate that the Secretary of State took the initiative in raising the subject this afternoon. No one asked him to do so or raised it with him and I hope that the Government will continue to keep us informed. There will be consensus among reasonable people in this House on taking whatever responsible measures may be required in the light of the threat over the next few years. I put it no more strongly than that. The official Opposition—the Conservative Opposition, whom I used to support officially; not always with great conviction in recent years—made me feel this afternoon that I was glad that I was not on those Benches. I thought how embarrassed I would have felt if I had been. The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) implied strongly that he thought that it was a priority for us to get into the business of building icebreakers.