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Iraq

I thank the Prime Minister for quoting extensively from our Select Committee report and commend him for demonstrating the political will to see the operation in Iraq through, despite his understandable desire to draw down troops earlier than proved to be possible. However, the problem of overstretch does not go away, as the leader of the Liberal Democrats pointed out, and there is a question about whether either the commitments or the defence planning assumptions are wrong. Given that the defence planning assumptions have been exceeded in more years than they have not since they were drawn up in 1998, is not it time to revisit them? I doubt that Iraq will be the last place in which we are required to intervene, even if operations in Afghanistan continue.