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Defence Policy

Unusually, we have had two days in a row in which to consider the grave problems facing our armed forces in the context of the Afghanistan campaign. Yesterday, we had a major statement from the Prime Minister and an opportunity to question him. Among the points that he acknowledged was the fact that 80 per cent. of our casualties arise from roadside bombs. That is an important factor—in fact, it is the supremely important factor because, although my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) has just said that we must concentrate on getting in, getting on and winning, the reality is that we need to wage a campaign in which we do not take levels of casualties that the public are not prepared to bear. That, above all, is the single reason that people in this country are dissatisfied with the campaign in Afghanistan. It is not a question of a lack of patience, or of not spending enough money or of troops going back on a recent tour to the same forward operating base that they occupied two, three or four years ago. The country will not put up with a disproportionate cost in lives for a campaign that shows no sign of ending. We cannot be defeated on the battlefield, but we can be defeated in the battle for morale. Above all, that is why the Government should focus on doing everything they can to protect our servicemen and women in the field and to ensure that they are not exposed to unnecessary risks. I venture to suggest that, if our enemies in Afghanistan focused on a strategic objective of ensuring that they killed two or three British service personnel every week, keeping that up for a sufficient length of time would be enough to harden opposition to the continuance of the campaign. We must therefore be as canny as our opponents, not only because we owe it to our servicemen and women to protect them but because it is essential for the success of the campaign. We must go out of our way to ensure that our enemies cannot do the one thing that would force us to feel that we had to leave. That is why I was disturbed to get an unsatisfactory answer from the Prime Minister yesterday, when I asked him about the fact that 80 per cent. of our casualties were caused by roadside bombs. I asked:""What proportion of the convoys attacked by those bombs were resupply convoys, which could and should have been transported by air but which were not because of the disgraceful shortage of air transport capacity?"" The Prime Minister replied that he did not accept my conclusion. He went on to say:""A lot of the casualties have, unfortunately, been those people who have been on foot patrol, trying to build relationships with the Afghan people"." That might well be true of some of the casualties, but it is certainly not true of all of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) intervened on the Prime Minister subsequently to say that he was""staggered at the Prime Minister's characterisation of the deaths from IEDs as being caused by foot patrols and not by the lack of helicopters."" My hon. Friend went on to say:""Commanders regularly complain of unnecessary logistical road moves."—[Official Report, 14 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 316, 320.]" I know that to be true because I have had similar complaints made to me. This matter is not going to go away, and I advise Defence Ministers to ensure that it is a complaint that will not be repeated in the future, although it has been justified in the past. My mind goes back to the "Defence in the UK" debate of 26 March, when we heard from three Government Back-Bench speakers, seven Conservative Back-Bench speakers and no Back-Bench speakers from the Liberal Democrats. Today, we have heard from five Government Back-Bench speakers, 11 Conservative Back-Bench speakers and, once again, no Back-Bench speakers from the Liberal Democrats. [Interruption.] I am asked why not, but I am afraid that I can provide no enlightenment on that. The shadow Secretary of State and the Secretary of State rightly focused on the Afghanistan campaign, as did many other Members in our debate. The hon. Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), who is no longer in his place, told the tragic story of Kyle Adams and concluded that we ought to give up, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), in a passionate and most moving speech, gave an account of the loss of so many members of his former unit and concluded that we must crack on. The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) made the important point, re-emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East a few moments ago, that we must work with the grain of Afghan society and not against it. The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) wanted the nuclear deterrent to be included in the strategic defence review, while the hon. Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) wanted the aircraft carriers to be excluded from it. The aircraft carriers were also a cause close to the heart of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck). Much concern was expressed about the need to give maximum support to those grievously injured in body and in mind. My hon. Friends the Members for East Devon (Mr. Swire), for Newbury and for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) spoke about that. In that connection, when it comes to reintegration of grievously wounded people into society, I welcome the emergence of organisations such as Soldier On, which is organised by a very able young man called Nicholas Harrison, who is determined to find ways in which an employment agency can be created in order to get people who have lost limbs into civilian work so that they can live their lives earning and working their own way. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex stressed the absurd duplication of top-level bureaucratic posts, while my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Robert Key) was as robust as he always is on both Trident and the carriers, adding a detailed study of the potential of the Hebrides missile-testing range. My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) referred to the dangers of cyber attack, to which I would add the dangers of electromagnetic pulse attack. People are constantly talking about the possibility of rogue states getting nuclear weapons and using them to attack other countries directly, but a single nuclear weapon used by a rogue state and exploded above a target country could well do irreparable damage to its infrastructure without directly attacking the country itself. My right hon. Friend also stressed, as always, the vital importance of the aerospace industry and the necessity of keeping it as an essential part of our defence industrial base. Huge concern was expressed about the threat to future reserves. Apart from the robust comments of the shadow Secretary of State, we heard contributions from the Chairman of the Defence Committee, from my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Sussex and for East Devon and especially from my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), who has shown a long dedication to the cause of the reserves. When the Minister replies, will he tell us whether the Government will guarantee first not to extend the non-payment of the Territorial Army beyond this six-month period and, secondly, not to extend it to the Army Cadet Force as well? I must stress to Ministers that people in the reserve forces do it not for the money, but for the training and the love of it. My own modest career as a seaman in the Royal Naval Reserve would not have appealed to me if I had not had a ship to go to sea on at the weekends as part of my training. If such training is cut off from people for six months, we may well find that, even if the tap is turned on again at the end of the process, such crews are no longer available.