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Iraq

I appreciate everything in the first part of the hon. Gentleman's remarks. We were right to make the decisions that we have made. As his report shows, the training that the Ministry of Defence is undertaking of the Iraqi forces is yielding results—we can see the improvement every week in the Basra area. The improvement is also due to the change of tactics in the west of Iraq. Of course, at all times we would like to do more with the defence budget, but it will be some 11 per cent. higher in real terms than it was in 1997. We have made major commitments of resources and capital in recent years and the defence budget rises every year. To be absolutely accurate, and to correct something that I said at Prime Minister's Question Time, the UK is the second highest spending nation on defence, behind only the United States of America. That shows that we have continued to make commitments on defence, and we will continue to do that in future. We will of course continue to examine the capital budget and the planning assumptions, but the hon. Gentleman cannot take away from us the fact that the defence budget has continued to rise, or the fact that we have fulfilled the urgent operational requirements of the ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.