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Mr. Ingram: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he got in touch with Amnesty International and asked it to produce the dossier that it sent to me, and if not, why not? It is Amnesty that has said that it is a dossier.
Mr. Simpson: No. I have to say to the Minister that I would love to be the Minister for the Armed Forces, but it is he, not me, who has to answer for the Government. It seems that what we have seen today is a lot of legalistic semantics from a Minister who has been unable or unwilling to answer the even more substantial questions that I have just put to him. I am sure that members of the armed forces and the press will notice that.
Both the US and the UK have been steadily losing the confidence of the public over Iraq. To my mind, that is a tragedy. As one who firmly supported the Government in their operations in Iraq, I sincerely hope that, through the good efforts of the United States and our Government, we will be able to hand over to an Iraqi Government on 30 June. However, our Government have created a series of blunders. The
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Ministry of Defence appears not to know what is going on with major allegations, which seems to replicate what has happened in other Departments. For example, we saw what happened in the Home Office over its asylum policy, when Ministers appeared to blame civil servants and said that things were not going correctly but that they did not know what was going on. So far, as we have seen, the Minister here has been unable to answer any of my questions.
Mr. Leigh: There is one point that has not yet been made in this interesting debate. If we are talking about the morale of our troops and the need to win over public support, does my hon. Friend think that it would be useful for the Government to share with the House their future strategy for Iraq? No one expects the Government to give us exact details on when we might withdraw, but we want some kind of intimation of what their exit strategy is, what sort of guidelines are being laid down and when our troops might be coming home—or at least when we might start to reduce their numbers.
Mr. Simpson: My hon. Friend has raised a series of points that others have raised with the Prime Minister. The date of 30 June is less than two months away, and we assume that the Prime Minister will consult our senior coalition partner to establish a strategy that is credible and that will somehow manage to reverse the dangerous situation that our troops now see themselves in. There must be security and a diplomatic and military strategy for Iraq, and I look forward to Ministers producing that.
The Minister has not answered a number of crucial questions. Either he just did not know or was not told or there is a degree of incompetence that I cannot believe exists in the Ministry of Defence, which I always thought was well run. It is not that I or other Opposition Members—or, indeed, Labour Back Benchers—are critical of the actions of British troops. We are not; but we are critical of what appears to be the stumblebum activity of Ministers.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con): Before my hon. Friend leaves the handling of prisoners in Iraq, may I ask if he is aware of an exchange between our noble Friend the late and much lamented Lord Vincent and Lord Bach in the House of Lords last July, some six months before the Red Cross report? Lord Vincent asked about the handling of Iraqi prisoners. Lord Bach said that that was a matter of grave concern, that he would look into it and that he would pay it every possible attention. Is it conceivable that the Red Cross report was then ignored?
Mr. Simpson: I think that my hon. Friend made a slip of the tongue; that was in fact the late Lord Vivian.
What concerns many hon. Members, and many people in the armed forces, some of whom are probably watching the debate, is the fact that those issues were raised. They were raised on a large scale in Washington, yet they seem to have come as a great surprise to Ministers. Why?
I shall try to keep the rest of my remarks relatively short, because many hon. Members wish to speak—
Mr. Ingram:
The hon. Gentleman wanted me to respond to his questions, so, just for the record, three
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issues directly relating to our armed forces were raised in the ICRC report. All of those were known about and were being addressed. Reports were being made. We knew about the Baha Mousa investigation; we knew about the hooding, which had been stopped in September; and of course, the other issue relating to a vehicle and the compensation relating to it was also known about. All the matters that the ICRC report eventually dealt with had already been acted on. As my noble Friend Lord Bach said, we all take these matters seriously, and we acted on them. I am interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that there are any other issues that we have not acted on in this context?
Mr. Simpson: I refer the Minister back to the series of questions that I asked him and invite him to answer them. Can he confirm that there were three British military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison? Did they report back what was going on there, to him or to any senior military commander, or not?
Mr. Ingram: The answer is yes and yes.
Mr. Simpson: What action did the Minister then take? Did he contact his United States military counterpart—
Mr. Ingram: The hon. Gentleman is missing the point here. He asked whether there were three people there and whether they reported back. They always report back on the work that they are doing. He is assuming that there were adverse reports.
Mr. Simpson: That is the whole question that I asked: were they adverse? Does the Minister want to reply to that?
Mr. Ingram: They make reports, and those matters are then acted on—[Interruption.] They report on all matters that are brought to their attention, and to the best of my information, as this question has been asked, no, the reports were not adverse.
Mr. Simpson: The Minister is saying that those people did report back, but he has not said whether he knows whether they reported on the adverse conditions. Does he, to the best of his ability, know whether he or the Secretary of State raised the matter with Defence Secretary Rumsfeld or other Ministers in Washington? This is crucial, in terms of the reputation of the British armed forces, and of what Ministers knew about. The obvious conclusion is that either Ministers did not know about it, or they knew about it but decided not to report. Ah, a note has arrived from the Box: "You're on your own."
Mr. Ingram: Actually, the note does not say that. I was reflecting on it because it gives the same answer as that which I have already given. These people were always told to report back, and they saw nothing of the kind that the hon. Gentleman suggests. They did not observe what he is alluding to.
Mr. Simpson:
I am grateful to the Minister for that response. It has taken five minutes of questions to
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establish that there were British military personnel in Abu Ghraib when some of these activities took place but that, as far as he knows, they did not see, observe, witness or hear about such atrocities. I am grateful to the Minister for putting that on the record—I only wish that he had done so five minutes ago. It has been rather like getting an undergraduate to answer questions in a university viva.
Mr. Leigh: A very important point has emerged in the last 10 minutes. We now know that we had our own people in that prison, in which there was widespread abuse, but apparently they told their superiors nothing of what was going on. That beggars belief. What were they doing there? Was there some form of—dare I use a phrase that is often used by Labour Members?—cover-up in their minds? We need to know more and to see the reports.
Mr. Simpson: My hon. Friend makes an important point. If there are such reports, perhaps the Minister might be willing to publish them, to prove not only that British military personnel were there, but that they did not see any atrocities taking place and, of course, that they were not directly involved in such things themselves. I genuinely believe that what we have experienced this afternoon does no credit to the Ministry of Defence, and it must be deeply worrying to members of our armed forces. If only Ministers would come clean and put on the record what actually happened, instead of putting up more smoke, tabloid newspapers would not have to pick up and make up stories. I hope that the Minister will be better prepared to deal with these issues in time for Monday's Defence questions.
I turn finally and briefly to the other issues that the Minister touched on, the first of which is the pattern of operations and their impact on our armed forces. Deployments in the past seven years have included continuous operations in the Balkans, and additional operations in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Army commitments have fluctuated from a peak of 44 per cent. in 1999 to 22 per cent. in April 2001. In November 2001, there was a 31 per cent. commitment to operations, and a 40 per cent. commitment at the height of the Iraq conflict.
Of course, we all recognise the professionalism and dedication of our armed forces, but reductions in the Army, Navy and Air Force are taking place between tour intervals, placing an increasing demand on all ranks. As many serving officers tell us, eventually, that begins to wear down the professionalism of the armed forces, and it begins to persuade many—particularly those who are married and under pressure from their husbands or wives—that they should think again about military service. I accept that Ministers have tried to address this issue, but they have yet to get it right.
There is also the dreadful business of overstretch, as a result of which the armed forces frequently have to carry out concurrent military operations. Despite the best efforts of the strategic defence review, the armed forces are getting very close to being unable to do more than one big operation, perhaps alongside one small one. Indeed, it was the firemen's strike that put the biggest
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strain on our armed forces. We need to know what solution Ministers propose, given that, according to the defence White Paper, our armed forces will be involved in even more such operations, which will impose even greater stresses and strains.
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