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G8 Summit

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and join him in paying tribute to Corporal Jonathan Horne, Rifleman William Aldridge, Rifleman James Backhouse, Rifleman Joseph Murphy and Rifleman Daniel Simpson, all of the 2nd Battalion the Rifles, Private John Brackpool of 1st Battalion the Welsh Guards, Corporal Lee Scott of 2nd Royal Tank Regiment, and Rifleman Daniel Hume of 4th Battalion the Rifles. This is a heartbreaking roll call of losses, including many young men who displayed courage and a professionalism well beyond their years. We all owe them a great deal. I believe that the British people are resilient and understand the sacrifices that are inevitable in conflict, as long as the purpose of that conflict is clearly explained and understood, but how can people understand the true nature of this war when the Government have refused to explain what the achievable aims of the mission really are? For the past eight years, the Government have been sending mixed signals about the nature and purpose of the deployment. In the past week we have had the Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary giving different justifications for the war. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches support the Afghan mission to stabilise Afghanistan and to reduce the threat of terrorism to British citizens. However, we need to be very clear about the limits of what we can achieve. Military action may be able to contain problems but not resolve them. We have learned some difficult lessons in the past eight years. We have learned that our forces were not in a position to secure Helmand province alone, given the chronic shortages of equipment and manpower. We have learned that, because of the nature of Afghan tribal society, we must not overreach ourselves by trying to import overnight a western-style liberal democracy to a country that has never had a functioning central Government. Does the Prime Minister now accept that, at best, what we can do is stabilise Afghanistan to provide a space for the state to grow? Does he see that, since our troops first stepped into Afghanistan, the Government's strategy has been over-ambitious in aim and under-resourced in practice? Is not it time to commit the necessary resources and to set a reasonable goal? When exactly—he still has not answered this question today—will he find a way to send the desperately needed helicopters to our troops on the ground? When will the Prime Minister seek full co-ordination of the international political strategy in Afghanistan? We know that President Karzai vetoed last year the appointment of a single, strong political figure to co-ordinate the international effort in Afghanistan, so will the Prime Minister prevail upon President Karzai or his successor to reverse that decision and to accept the appointment of a single senior figure with sufficient authority to bring together the piecemeal strategies of the international community? Finally, I should like to turn to the G8 summit conclusions on nuclear non-proliferation. It is likely that conflicts such as Afghanistan will dominate in the coming years, rather than the old, state-to-state conflicts of the cold war era, so I welcome the position—the strong line—taken at the G8 on nuclear non-proliferation and the 2010 non-proliferation talks. However, does the Prime Minister not agree that rushing to commit Britain to like-for-like replacement of the cold war era Trident system hardly puts us at the forefront of such efforts? Is not it time both to admit that we do not need and cannot afford Trident on that scale, and to start to look properly at the alternatives, so that we can then commit the resources needed to our brave troops on the ground in Afghanistan and elsewhere?