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Defence Policy

We were warned of such potentially catastrophic outcomes in Iraq, yet what has happened there has been largely a success story in building the capacity of the army. I have no reason to believe—especially having been to some of the training grounds and spoken to British commanders on the ground—that the Afghan national army, when fully trained and having fully absorbed their trainers' methods and values, will be anything other than a valuable and effective professional army in the service of maintaining its country's national security. There are questions about whether a similar top-down approach could be applied to the Afghan national police. Indeed, because policing requires consensus—about the application of the penal code and the judicial system that interprets it—training in the Afghan national police needs to be more of a bottom-up exercise, to complement the top-down external security that the Afghan national army provides. That remains one of the biggest political challenges that President Obama and the coalition face in taking the political process forward. Assuming that we get the strategy correct in Afghanistan—General McChrystal's assessment suggests that that is paramount—the Government must always ensure that our troops are properly equipped for the crucial operations in which they are involved. That includes providing the earliest possible increase in the number of helicopters, armoured vehicles and other key battlefield enablers. To maximise the mission's success while minimising the risk to our forces, we must have the capability of moving troops safely while maintaining flexibility and manoeuvrability. It cannot be disputed that there is a shortage of UK helicopters in Helmand. That is largely as a result of the Government's dreadful decision in 2004 to cut the future helicopter budget by £1.4 billion in the middle of two wars. There is no getting away from it. Let me focus on specifics. Recently, two Chinook helicopters were destroyed in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, that is an inevitable consequence of warfare. However, will the Minister give an assurance that the attrition buy for replacing them will be funded from the Treasury reserve, not the core Ministry of Defence budget? On 1 May, the Ministry of Defence announced that Vectors were being phased out of Afghanistan, but during the summer recess, we learned that an RAF airman was killed when patrolling in a Vector. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister guarantee that the on-scene commander had a choice of vehicles for the mission, as Ministers promised, and was not forced to use the vehicle through lack of choice? Will the Minister state in his winding-up speech how long he believes that it will take before the last Vectors come out of service in Afghanistan? We welcome the addition of Mastiff and Ridgeback armoured vehicles. However, it has been almost two years since the 157 Ridgebacks were ordered, but only a trickle of them are getting into theatre, and we still have a shortage of lift capacity. In his oration at his party conference, the Secretary of State criticised my criticism of the slowness of delivering the Ridgebacks. His justification was that the vehicles were not due in Afghanistan till the next deployment of forces and that, in fact, they were early. That is a bureaucrat's thought process. When people are being killed yesterday, there is no such thing as "early" for delivering equipment in theatre. It is not criticising the lack of equipment, but not having it, that damages morale and jeopardises the mission.