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Afghanistan

The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed both inside and outside the House the mission in Afghanistan, on many occasions. It may not appear so from his contribution, but there is much less between us than people who heard him for the first time today might imagine. I am grateful to him and his Front-Bench colleagues for the support that they have consistently given our mission, and for their appreciation of the complexity involved, which was implicit in his contribution. The hon. Gentleman made so many points that if I sought to answer them all, I would stretch the patience of the House, so I promise to do what I usually do in the circumstances. I will read the Hansard record of his questions carefully, and if I do not deal with them, I will respond in writing, so that everyone in the House can see the answers to his specific questions. However, the heart or gravaman of what he said must be responded to. I carefully constructed the statement to the House to show that we were responding to changed circumstances on the ground, which have been brought about by an acceleration of progress in the past 12 months, largely because of the contribution of our forces, but not only because of that, as he knows. Indeed, the situation in the south of Helmand province has largely been created by the deployment of the marine expeditionary unit that served with our forces in the lower part of the Helmand valley, and which has transformed the area around the town of Garmsir. I am responding to that, because that marine expeditionary unit plans to be there only until about November, so we are putting some forces down there who will work alongside Afghan security forces to hold what has been achieved and keep the Taliban from reinfecting that part of the country. May I tell the House—and I think that this is important—that there are of the order of 17 countries in ISAF represented in either the south or the east, where the heavy lifting is being done? I agree with the hon. Gentleman about sharing the burden across the whole alliance. I repeatedly make those points, and there is now some success to be gleaned from that advocacy, in which I and indeed others engage in NATO. I should share the statistics with the House, because they show an impressive commitment by the alliance, the broader ISAF alliance and, principally, by NATO. When NATO met in Riga last year, there were 32,000 forces in the ISAF. When we met in Bucharest, there were 47,000, but when NATO Ministers met in Brussels only last week, there were 50,000, and those numbers are increasing. That is a measure of the level of commitment: there are more helicopters, there is more helicopter time, and other allies are now taking steps, in conjunction with initiatives that we have generated, to improve helicopter availability. In short, the NATO alliance has been transformed by its engagement in Afghanistan. I have a different way of going about it from the hon. Gentleman, but I think that my way has shown significant progress in that regard, in the number of countries that are there, the absence of caveats for their forces, and the significant increase of force deployed in the south.