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Defence in the World

On this occasion, the Secretary of State is quite wrong. I want to ask him about the lessons that have been learned in Afghanistan, and before that in Iraq. They have been extremely hard-learned, because we had completely forgotten how to fight a counter-insurgency war. As most of the casualties have come from IEDs, why did this country sell its Chubby sets, which would have protected routes, and why are we still using a medieval system of Barma route clearing? When will Talisman—I am grateful to the Minister for the Armed Forces, who recently wrote to me about it following the previous debate—be fully operational in Afghanistan?