---

Future of the Territorial Army

If the hon. Gentleman goes back to what I said earlier, I do not believe that we should be thinking about money at all here. We are at war at the moment. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) made the point that we are at war, and he has more experience of the armed forces than any other hon. Member. Many people have concerns about the operations that we are undertaking in Afghanistan, and many of those are not willing to express them too publicly because they greatly respect the valour and commitment of our armed forces out there. But it would be helpful if the Government could be a little more clear about what we are setting out to achieve. One moment they tell us that it is all about solving the drugs problem. Yet, as I know from my own work as a special constable, we do very little about drug dealers and drug users on the streets of this country. If we were serious about tackling drugs, it would be far better to put those drug dealers in jail for a long time than send young men and women out to Afghanistan. They say that it is about bringing democracy to Afghanistan, yet it has never had democracy. There is no culture of democracy there. I do not think that it is all that likely that we will build some kind of a liberal democrat paradise in the Hindu Kush overnight. Even if it were possible, I would have to ask why we are not trying to do that everywhere else in the world. Then they say that it is about al-Qaeda. It is perfectly legitimate for us to deal with that, but if it is about dealing with al-Qaeda training camps, why cannot we do what we did in Iraq for 10 years, when we simply used air strikes to bomb the bases that were causing us all of the problems, with very little loss of life? Unlike many hon. Members I am not a military expert and I do not have the answers, but many people are asking me the questions and they are difficult to answer, because the Government are not willing to put them over themselves.