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G8 Summit

Let me start with Afghanistan. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he said about the debt that we owe to our troops. Over the past weekend, which has been very difficult for our forces, I talked to the Chief of the Defence Staff, and I talked this morning to our commander on the ground in Afghanistan, Brigadier Tim Radford. I visited the Northwood joint headquarters to receive a briefing on Operation Panther's Claw, and this morning I visited RAF Benson to see the progress of the Merlin helicopter programme and talk to some of our very brave helicopter pilots who are in Afghanistan. Of course, I have also talked to President Obama about progress in Afghanistan, and yesterday to President Karzai, who I keep in regular touch with to talk about events in Afghanistan and what we can do. While we are not complacent and will always be vigilant, I have to tell the House that despite the terrible loss of some great soldiers, to whom we owe this huge debt of gratitude, our forces on the ground are making progress in Operation Panther's Claw, and have made it absolutely clear to us that they are moving ahead with some speed in clearing the ground. Behind them will come Afghan forces, whose numbers I want to see raised very substantially over the next few weeks. The civilian effort led by Governor Mangal is in place. It is our hope not only to take the ground and to clear it, but to hold it, using both our own forces and Afghan forces. At the same time, there should be a civilian effort to make sure that the land is held and that people believe that they have a stake in the future. I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman, despite his quotations from various people, that the British Army spokesman in Helmand province, Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Richardson, has repeated what has been said to me in private. He said publicly:""Absolutely we have the proper equipment. Our equipment is first rate and we have plenty of it. It's…about having a full range of equipment, people are being critical of vehicles, we have a full range of vehicles here that help provide the protection that soldiers need."" He went on to say:""So everything from the vehicles to the personal protective equipment, whether it's body armour, helmets and also the weaponry, and also the specialist equipment, it's here, it's great…it works"." I have to say, also, that when he was asked about helicopters, he said:""There's much speculation about helicopters and have we got enough. It's a sad fact that helicopters would not have saved the lives of the individuals last week. We've got to be…on the ground, we've got to be interacting with the population—you cannot conduct a war from a helicopter. So the equipment we have is very, very good. In terms of would we like more, any commander will say yes, we'd like more. Yes, we'd like more equipment and we'd like more troops, whatever it may be, but my commander is very hard over on the fact that he has sufficient to get on with the task…which he has been given."" I hope that the information that comes from people on the ground who are working in Afghanistan is taken on board by the House in this debate. We have increased the number of helicopters by 60 per cent. in less than two years. Because we have more crews and because we have made adjustments to those helicopters, we have increased the capability of those helicopters—in other words, the flying hours that they can do—by 84 per cent. By the end of this year, the Merlin helicopters, which I saw this morning when I visited RAF Benson, will be on the ground in Afghanistan. In addition, we contract from NATO a lot of helicopters that do the work of getting our equipment on to the ground. We have created a helicopter fund, so that we and other people can contribute to countries that will provide helicopters, and we will pay for them to be upgraded. That will create 11 helicopters over the next period of time. We are working very closely with the United States of America on those issues, and of course we have set aside £6 billion for future investment, particularly in the new Lynx helicopter, over the next 10 years. I hope that Opposition Members who want to make an issue of the fact that there are insufficient helicopters will take it on board that while of course we would want more helicopters, there has been a 60 per cent. increase, and there will be more on the ground by the end of the year. In addition, of course, we are converting eight Chinooks to enable them to deal with the weather in Afghanistan. I have to say that to move helicopters from Iraq to Afghanistan is very difficult, because the weather in Afghanistan and the terrain on which people are operating are very difficult. The helicopters have to be converted. Our crews have got to be trained for the ground on which they are fighting. I believe that people appreciate that we are striving daily to have the best equipment available for our troops in Afghanistan. As for the numbers of troops, in our discussions with the military, of course one talks about all the options that are available, but let me just make it clear that we decided, after discussion with our military and with President Obama, that we would increase the number of troops from 8,100 at the point at which we discussed the matter to 9,000. There are today about 9,150 people on the ground in Afghanistan. I repeat that I have been reassured by commanders on the ground and at the top of the armed services that we have the manpower that we need for current operations. I have also said that once the elections are over, we will review the numbers with our allies and with our commanders on the ground. We have made our additions to the numbers in Afghanistan. We have persuaded some other countries to contribute more troops, but we are the second largest provider of troops for Afghanistan. We are far ahead of other countries, and we insist that there has got to be proper burden-sharing across NATO. I hope that every section of the House will want to support that. I repeat that in April we published our strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. We understand very clearly that we must have success in both countries if we are to be able to deal with the problem of terrorism. We also understand that military action alone, although vital, is not sufficient. We need action on the ground with development aid, and we need to train local people to take responsibility for security in their areas. Our strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan is to tackle the terrorist threat. We are now in a position where the Pakistan Government are taking action in the Swat and in Waziristan, and progress is being made in the Swat valley. Therefore, we have a complementary strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan to tackle the terrorist threat, to strengthen local forces on the ground, to bring development help to these areas, and in Afghanistan to tackle the heroin trade that is so costly not only in Afghanistan, but around the world. That is the strategy that we are pursuing with our American allies and with 40 other allies in the region, who are contributing to the effort. I repeat that there needs to be burden sharing not just in troops, but in development. We are contributing a substantial amount of development aid both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. We have shifted aid from the other areas of Pakistan to the north-west area. We are determined to do more in those areas to help young people to go to school, for example, and to make sure that the internally displaced people in Pakistan have homes that they can go to and proper services. I come to the other issues raised by the Leader of the Opposition. It is precisely because we must meet our commitments on development aid that we, the British Government, have issued a call to action. We have asked other countries to join us in realising the poverty emergency that exists and what we have to do. Let me be clear that the reason that we could not get an agreement on trade in 2008 was that the Indians and the Americans could not come to an agreement on what was called a very specific safeguard clause for Indian imports. I believe that that barrier is being removed. That is why I believe that there is hope that the new trade negotiations that will start will have greater success. Trade Ministers have been asked to meet before the Pittsburgh summit in 2010. On climate change, the right hon. Gentleman knows that our policy is not only long-term targets and that there must be help for developing countries; interim targets must be agreed as well. That is what we will be discussing at the Pittsburgh summit, then at the United Nations, and then on the road to Copenhagen in December. On the economy, I repeat that it is because we have succeeded in getting global action, partly at the G20 meetings in Washington and London, and partly at the G8 meeting that we have just had, that the world has a shared policy to deal with the recession. It is to create financial stability. The Americans are proposing a similar arrangement to the one that we have—the regulators, the central Bank and the Government work together. That is precisely what the Americans are proposing to do. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that no financial policy in future can work unless the Treasury, the Bank of England and the financial regulatory authorities work together. To my knowledge, no country that was at the G8 shares the right hon. Gentleman's proposal to cut public spending at a time when people need it, and to fail to support a recovery.