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Mr. Keetch: I heard exactly what the Secretary of State said today and yesterday—there are to be 1,200 additional troops and 1,000 will be on standby. The question that I and a number of others have asked is whether the Government can give an assessment as to whether that will be the final tranche of British troops

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deployed in Iraq. I understand that it is difficult to predict the future, but surely the armed forces need to know whether thousands more are to be sent to Iraq.

Mr. Caplin: Thankfully, Government policy is more flexible than that, and I cannot possibly answer that question because, as the hon. Gentleman will accept, we do not know what circumstances may arise. [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. Perhaps the House could come to order.

Mr. Caplin: In the short time that remains—

Richard Younger-Ross: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Caplin: Later, if I have time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) referred to unexploded ordnance. Coalition forces have already cleared 350,000 unexploded munitions, and that was done primarily by UK and Danish teams.

I turn now to the speech of the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan. I feel that his horse-racing tips would have been better than his speech. He clearly did not understand my intervention about the UN Security Council. He kept going on about a UN force, but he will be aware that Kofi Annan has ruled out any suggestion of a blue helmet force. To clarify matters for the hon. Gentleman, I point out that the important donors conference in Madrid next month, to which I am sure he would like to give his support, is referred to in the draft text of the Security Council resolution that is currently on the table.

Mr. Salmond: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Caplin: Go on then.

Mr. Salmond: Will the Minister be kind enough to reflect on the fact that the majority of the speeches made by Back Benchers in this debate supported my point about the UN force and, indeed, our amendment, which unfortunately was not selected? Since the Minister chose to mention me, will he return to the question of what the Foreign Secretary was going on about in the leaked memo about 5,000 troops? Will he answer the question—can we expect more troop deployments or not? If it is all going according to plan, why cannot he answer that question?

Mr. Caplin: Well, I believe that the story to which the hon. Gentleman refers was in The Daily Telegraph, which I do not read.

Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Caplin: I am afraid that I cannot. There is no time.

Mr. Garnier rose—

Mr. Caplin: With respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, he has not been here all afternoon, but those

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who have, including the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Walter) and some of my colleagues, asked about the Iraq survey group. As hon. Members will know, the US is leading efforts to uncover the full extent of the misdeeds perpetrated by Saddam's regime. As well as unearthing efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, that will include investigations into possible war crimes and support by the regime for terrorism. The group will have all the expertise that it needs for each particular task, and some members will be former UN weapons inspectors. The UK contribution to the group will be between 60 and 100 personnel, both military and civilian.

Questions were asked about troop deployment. My hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) asked about non-UK and non-US troops in Iraq. There are 14,700 such troops, of whom the majority, 9,200, are Polish, and we very much welcome the support of our soon-to-be EU colleagues in Poland. About 5,500 of the troops are from other nations, including good friends of the UK such as Denmark, Norway, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

Other questions have been asked about troop deployments by the hon. Member for Meriden and others. There was a review of troop numbers in July, which was accepted by the hon. Member for North Essex as being right and proper. At that time the review in theatre decided not to contribute any more troops. I emphasise the comments made earlier by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Local commanders in Iraq have requested the additional troop deployments that he announced in the written ministerial statement, and we shall continue to keep the matter under review with our commanders in the field in Iraq.

Richard Younger-Ross: Does the Minister accept that commanders on the ground said earlier this year that they were happy with the number of troops deployed because they were told that the Department for International Development would provide more resources? The Department has not done that, which is why we have the problem.

Mr. Caplin: I do not accept that. The clear emphasis of the earlier part of my speech was on the work of Her Majesty's Government through the Department for International Development and other agencies. It seems

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clear to me and to the whole House that the Department is working alongside our armed forces, and with the agencies that I listed earlier.

I shall conclude by taking up three or four points that were made in the debate. The hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) talked about overstretch in the reserves. Reservists exist to be used—I think that the hon. Gentleman will know that. That is in line with the strategic defence review. Indeed, it is what reservists are paid for, and that is why they are reservists. Currently, 2,200 reservists are in theatre, and no extra reservists were called out as part of yesterday's statement and deployment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith)—I do not know whether he is in his place—is the chair of the parliamentary Labour party defence committee and he knows a good deal about some of these matters. He spoke about the plan to establish democracy in Iraq. The House must understand that two months after the formation of the Iraqi governing council, that council is now heavily involved in the key economic and political decisions. On 3 September, only about a week ago, the council appointed 25 interim Iraqi Ministers. From now on, Iraq's Government Ministers will be led by Iraqi politicians responsible for implementing policy and managing their budgets. That was worth welcoming by the hon. Members for Meriden and for North Essex, but they never referred to it.

Even for those of my hon. Friends who may have opposed the military intervention, I think that it is now time to support those who are working so hard in Iraq to complete the task of its reconstruction. Our thoughts should remain with the families and friends of those who have lost their lives in Iraq. Fifty members of the United Kingdom armed forces as well as some civilians have died since 20 March. More have sustained injuries, some of them particularly serious. The whole House will wish them a speedy recovery.

What those people, both military and civilian, have in common is that they were trying to improve the lives of their fellow human beings in Iraq and the security of the middle east and the wider world. We are determined that their sacrifice will not be in vain. We shall continue what we have begun in Iraq, and we shall see it through to the end.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House takes note of the military situation in Iraq.

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9 Sept 2003 : Column 245

Teacher Shortages

4.59 pm

Mr. Damian Green (Ashford): I beg to move,

That this House notes that thousands of teaching posts have been lost in schools as a result of this year's funding crisis; condemns the Government for failing to respond early enough to reports of these redundancies, instead seeking to lay the blame on local authorities; further condemns the Government for not using any of the Department for Education and Skills' underspent money to alleviate this crisis; further notes that schools are having to ask parents for regular contributions to alleviate cash shortages; is concerned about the effect of these redundancies among teachers and support staff on the implementation of the Workload Agreement; and urges the Government to simplify the funding system for schools so that there will be no repeat of this year's problems in the recruitment and retention of teachers.

I am sure that the House will understand, as I do, that the Secretary of State has a prior commitment at the TUC, which is why he is not with us today. I hope that he takes the opportunity to talk to some of the teachers' representatives who will no doubt be there. One reason for our calling this debate is to show that the Government are letting down not just those who rely on our public services but those who work in them. It is not only parents and children who have been hit by the Government's school funding crisis but teachers, who are being made redundant in schools up and down the country. I am not surprised that teachers are angry—they have been betrayed by the Government's false promises, and they will never trust them again.

Ministers sometimes affect surprise that trust in the Government and especially the Prime Minister has disappeared. They seem puzzled that people no longer think that they are competent to run the public services. For an explanation they need look no further than the mess that they have created in our schools and their own performance in responding to this crisis since it became apparent earlier this year. This year, Ministers have provided the general public with a master-class in blunder and confusion. One moment we have protestations of innocence, while in the next breath the Government concoct a short-term and inadequate solution to the very problem that they just told the public did not exist at all.

The history of the crisis is instructive. When questioned by the Select Committee on Education and Skills in July this year, David Normington, the permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills, told us when he began to feel that there were going to be problems with school funding in the year ahead. His answer to the Select Committee was that it was after the Secretary of State's arrival

"at the end of October and before Christmas, some time around then."

We now know that the Department knew before Christmas that the crisis was going to hit our schools. After Christmas, at the Secondary Heads Association conference, the Secretary of State said that there was no problem. Indeed, he had previously told the Association of Chief Education Officers that simply throwing more money at them would not solve their problems. Such a request, he said, showing less than his usual charm,

"just floods straight over my head. I don't listen to what you say quite frankly".

I am sure that the association responded in kind.

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