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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I share my hon. Friend's puzzlement. He is really asking a question of the Defence Secretary, who will reply to the debate, through my speech. As the Defence Secretary is scribbling furiously, I hope that he will answer that question in addition to those that I have raised about the Government's approach. Let me turn to the middle east. It is a matter of great relief that the situation in Iraq has continued to improve through the course of this year. In welcoming the fact that our troops should be able to withdraw from Iraq in the coming months, we must never lose sight of the fact that 177 British armed forces personnel or MOD civilians have died serving there and that our forces have now been deployed there for more than 2,000 days, a commitment that is now longer than that for the whole of the second world war. Alongside our hopes for continued improvement in Iraq, are there not now several issues of particular concern to us in British-Iraqi relations? One of course is the legal status of our troops in Iraq after the expiry of the UN mandate at the end of this month. The Defence Secretary has said that the Government expect to conclude an agreement at the end of the year, but I hope that he will be able to tell us when the negotiations began, what the terms might be and what link will be established to the agreement on US forces in Iraq. Very little information has been given to Parliament and there has been no statement on this subject. I hope that the Government will also raise energetically with the Government of Iraq the human suffering wrought by the targeting of Iraq's minorities, including its Christian population. I hope they will also emphasise the situation of Iraq's 4.7 million refugees and displaced people, some of whom are in an increasingly desperate position. The situation is a recipe for instability and radicalisation in the region and must surely be a high priority for this country and our allies in our discussions with Iraqi Ministers. The Opposition continue to believe that parliamentary accountability and the scrutiny of foreign and defence policy need to be improved, with regular quarterly reports to Parliament of objectives set and goals attained when our troops are deployed overseas in action. The complexity of Iraq's politics, its military situation and the need for strong regional support mechanisms for the Iraqi state easily merit a full day's debate in this House, particularly given the expenditure of £6.5 billion of taxpayers' money on our operations in Iraq. The impending withdrawal of our forces brings us to two other issues. First, it was announced to the press overnight last night:"““The withdrawal of the 4,000 British troops in Iraq will be completed by next June, a senior defence source has disclosed””—" [Interruption.] I am reading from a newspaper article, but the reports appeared in several newspapers and in the absence of Government announcements the rest of the House has to make do with what the newspapers say. The report goes on:"““The Prime Minister is expected to make an announcement in the New Year laying out the timetable””" for the troops to pull out. Other newspapers lay out the rest of the timetable, saying that the withdrawal will begin in March and will be finished in June. If it is true, that information should have been given to Parliament in the form of a statement to the House of Commons. If it is not true, the Foreign Secretary, who is shaking his head, can get up and say so. The reports have the appearance of an authoritative leak and since this time national security is involved, perhaps it might be appropriate for the perpetrator to be arrested. The Government deplore leaks by day and live by them by night. Ministers either have no control over their Departments or are deliberately sanctioning such behaviour. I hope that when the Defence Secretary winds up he will tell us which of those alternatives is true and whether the leak is correct. He can deny it if he wishes to do so. We certainly hope that our troops can be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as is consistent with the security of that country, but if announcements are good enough for the newspapers, they should be good enough for the House of Commons. The other issue, which we have debated many times already in the House and which has already been brought up in questions to the Home Secretary, is the question of a full-scale inquiry into the origins and conduct of the war. In a speech in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, the Foreign Secretary said that"““despite good intentions in Iraq, and current progress, it is clear that serious mistakes were made.””" He must surely agree that if that is the case, it is important to examine what those mistakes were and what has been done to ensure that they will not be repeated. When we last debated the issue in the House, on 25 March, the Foreign Secretary said that"““there is agreement across the House that an inquiry into the Iraq war will be necessary…The dispute between us concerns not substance, but timing.—[Official Report, 25 March 2008; Vol. 474, c. 52.]" Since the Government now speak of ““tasks completed”” and ““fundamental change”” in our mission in Iraq, and are happy to see it announced in the press that the major deployment of British troops will come to an end in June, it must surely be time for them to make clear their intentions on an inquiry. Once again, I serve notice that if they fail to do that, we will return to the issue during this Session and the continued absence of an inquiry, or its setting up on an inadequate basis, will be rectified immediately on the election of a Conservative Government. The issues of parliamentary accountability and learning from mistakes bring us to the situation in Afghanistan, which is now much more alarming than that in Iraq. Once again we have British forces performing a role that is nothing short of heroic. The problems they face hardly need restating, so I shall only restate them briefly. Support from other NATO members is either insufficient in quantity or too hedged about with caveats, the civil aid and reconstruction programme is still not sufficiently well co-ordinated, the drugs trade continues on a vast scale and partly finances the insurgency, local police forces are ineffective and mistrusted and corruption still appears to be endemic in the Afghan state. That is quite a list of problems. It is clearly not within the gift of the British Government to solve all the problems on their own, but it may be no exaggeration to say that the fate of Afghanistan may rest on the review of strategy being conducted by General Petraeus, and on the new momentum that President-elect Obama clearly intends to bring to this area. It seems likely that the US will send a large number of additional troops to Afghanistan and that it will expect other NATO nations to do the same, alongside making a commitment to deploy some troops in the south, where British forces have borne the brunt of the fighting. That should be welcomed, but I hope that Ministers will be clear that any request for additional British forces will be considered in the context of the severe overstretch of our armed forces and their equipment, and of the disproportionate share of the burden that British troops have carried over the past three years. Like the Government, the Opposition have not ruled out supporting some increase in the level of British forces. We have gone out of our way to support the Government over Afghanistan and we always support our troops when they are deployed in combat but, if we are to support a further increase in our troop levels in Afghanistan, we would expect from the Government a clear explanation of the military necessity and purpose of such a deployment, an increase in the number of helicopters to ensure that our troops are properly mobile, improvements in equipment and protection for our troops, better co-ordination of aid and les corruption and better governance by the Afghans. Furthermore, any additional British commitment should be accompanied by greater commitment by other NATO allies and a step change in the level of their effort and readiness to engage in actual fighting. It should be part of a revised and comprehensive strategy covering all the civil, political and military aspects that I have already mentioned, and it should be followed by improved communication to Parliament of British objectives and the progress in meeting them. It is only through tabling written questions that we have learned that the UK"““has been asked to provide assistance to a US-led review of American defence and security policy””," and that the Government have"““provided a combined team to contribute to this work.””—[Official Report, 10 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 877W.]" We were also told that the team is now ““fully embedded”” in the American review process, and that it consists of 17 of our officials in Washington drawn from the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development. In another written answer—because we have had no recent parliamentary statement on the matter—we also learned on 10 November that the Government had established a ““formal review mechanism”” this year to produce a detailed periodic assessment of the situation in Afghanistan. Three weeks later, the Prime Minister announced it to the House as if it were a new development. We welcome the review, but it is something that should have been done on a cross-departmental basis at the beginning of the conflict, not many years into it, and it should lead to regular reports to the nation. The situation in Afghanistan is obviously at or near the top of the foreign policy priorities of the new Administration in Washington, and so it should be. Alongside it, presumably, will be the ever more urgent need for a diplomatic solution to the impasse over Iran's nuclear programme. The plain fact is that Iran today is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, with all the massive risks that that brings of nuclear proliferation in the middle east or war with Israel. According to the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Authority, by next month—that is, January—Iran will have accumulated a stockpile of nearly 1,000 kg of low-enriched uranium, an amount considered to be enough to produce 20 kg of weapons-grade uranium, or enough for one nuclear weapon after further enrichment. What stands between Iran and that goal is not, unfortunately, a united international community, but a series of technical hurdles whose resolution is only a matter of time. We do not know, of course, what opening will be made to Iran by the new US Administration, but we do know that time is running out if the world is not to enter a new era of nuclear insecurity. And whatever initiative the US takes, the chances of Iran responding positively to it must surely be increased if President-elect Obama is speaking from a position of strength and of strong but peaceful European pressure on Iran. It is now more than a year since the Prime Minister announced that he was working for a ban on European investment in Iranian oil and gas fields, yet as of today there are no restrictions on European companies making new investments in such fields. There is still no formal Europe-wide ban on export credit guarantees that subsidise trade with Iran, and a swathe of Iranian companies are still involved in Iran's nuclear programme, which the United States has targeted but which European nations have not. I am sure that the Foreign Secretary agrees with me that America's carrot will be more attractive to Iran if Europe carries a bigger stick. We recognise that it is difficult to achieve European agreement on these issues but it is galling to hear Iran's deputy Commerce Minister boast, as he did last month, that 67 per cent. of Iran's $140 billion foreign trade in 2007 came from Europe, and from Germany, France and Italy in particular. He also said:"““EU members are not paying any attention to the UN resolutions against Iran””." I think that that was an exaggeration, but the fact that he felt able to say that is alarming in itself. The looming danger of Iran's nuclear programme means that we need the EU as a whole to adopt the sanctions that we have called for. It should impose a formal ban on export credit guarantees, mirror US financial sanctions and place unequivocal restrictions on investment in Iranian oil and gas. That brings me to the final and most important point that I wish to make. The Foreign Secretary talked briefly about one of the great challenges facing the world—climate change. We very much agree with him about that. Climate change is increasingly taking up the Foreign Office's allocation of personnel and resources. It is one of the great challenges facing the world, and I hope that at some stage we can have a debate—or get more information from the Government—about how the resources of the Foreign Office, which are now deployed quite heavily on the issue of climate change, are being used. We also need to know how the deployment of personnel working on climate change—for instance in Brazil—actively serves to influence other nations' climate change policies. This House must be able to make an assessment of that. However, alongside that vital priority, the Iranian situation reminds us that nuclear proliferation is the other great issue facing the entire world. It seems entirely possible that within the next decade the great danger posed to our national security by international terrorism will be overtaken in magnitude by the dangers of nuclear proliferation. As the Foreign Secretary rightly noted towards the close of his speech, the non-proliferation treaty, which is subject to an international review conference in 2010, is under assault from within, with its member states locked in recrimination and stalemate. It is also being assailed from without, by the actions of countries such as Iran and North Korea and by the sheer march forward of science, which is making it easier by the day to acquire and to peddle nuclear technology.