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Defence Policy

Once again we have had an excellent debate. However, I do not have time to respond to all of the many valid points that have been raised in every corner of the House—a very knowledgeable House—about defence policy. In thinking about how to respond to the debate, I decided that I ought to start by at least trying to reply to the point made by the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). He raised the point, which is raised with us repeatedly, about the level of understanding of defence issues, of our armed forces and of the operations in which they are engaged not being as high as it should be. We all bear a responsibility to address that. It is not only the ministerial team who need to try to explain and inspire, but every one of us. When we consider the efforts being made, it is the responsibility of all of us in the House to explain the dangers, the sheer hard work undertaken on our behalf by our armed forces and all the associated defence issues. Having quoted Pericles, the right hon. Gentleman descended into some despair, but I do not accept that the people are foolish. We have come a long way, even in the past year, in terms of people's level of recognition and understanding of armed forces issues. I have noticed that, and I do not think that it is just because of where I stand. The people have moved and developed a greater understanding of defence issues and our armed forces. The work done by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) helped in some small measure to focus that increased recognition. [Interruption.] I know how he is loved by those on the Opposition Benches, so I thought that I would throw his name in. We have made progress on such issues, but we need to do more. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) talked about the need to commemorate past sacrifice and past wars and operations. I do not think that we do nearly enough to educate our people about our military history and try to ensure that they understand and can ground where we are now from our history. We ought to make more effort in that regard. The right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire related that lack of understanding to our current operations in Afghanistan. Again, I agree that a lot needs to be done to make people understand not only why we are there and what we are doing, but the massive military complexities of the theatre of operations and the huge political complexities, which in many ways are even more difficult than the military ones. I do not think that anyone expects the task in Afghanistan to be easy. All the parties represented in the House recognise and accept that we need to do it. Although it is very nice—and something that we ought to do—to try to build the Afghan nation, to try to give the Afghan people basic rights, to try to enable Afghan women to go to school and to try to stop the mediaeval nonsense that comes from the Taliban being imposed on the Afghan people, the real reason that we allow our young people to go there, and sometimes to die there, is that it is in our vital national interest to pursue this issue. We therefore have to try to increase people's levels of understanding. I wish that, when one or two Members of the House visit the Afghan theatre—or any other theatre, for that matter—they would go there with at least a half-open mind. Some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) appeared to display a prejudice, rather than a half-open mind. I would have hoped that he would have least looked at some of the achievements. Of course, a lot of those achievements have been delivered by our troops in highly dangerous environments—