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Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD): When our young men and women join our armed forces, they recognise that, at some point, they might have to put their lives on the line. That does not apply only to those on the front line, because modern warfare and weaponry mean that anyone wearing the uniform, as well as civilians, could get caught up in what is happening. We need to pay tribute to all the young men and women who sign up to serve in Her Majesty's—not the Labour Government's—armed forces.
The amount of correspondence, telephone calls and e-mails that I have received on this matter in the past 24 hours tells me that the perception out there is that the decision to deploy the Black Watch in Iraq has more to do with the presidential election in the United States than with the Iraqi elections or with peace. The Labour Government need to take that message very seriously; they ignore it at their peril.
I find it somewhat disturbing that, having asked the question three times, no Defence Minister can tell me in how many countries around the world Her Majesty's armed forces are serving, and have served in the past year. That illustrates just how widely spread the British armed forces are in their role as peacekeepers.
Mr. Ingram: The figure is 68, although that depends on how the hon. Gentleman defines his question. That figure includes all the defence attachés as well.
Bob Russell: I appreciate the Minister answering the question that the Secretary of State could not answer earlier today. I am grateful for this joined-up response.
May I suggest that when the British armed forces are doing so much around the world, as the Minister so eloquently acknowledges, this is not the time to be talking about reducing the size of the British Army? I have no remit to speak for those who are fighting to save their county regiments, but I am bound to observe that in 1958, all the regiments in the east of England—the combined population of whose counties is greater than that of Scotland—amalgamated to form the Royal Anglian Regiment. It is therefore possible to have regional regiments while retaining the community identity.
Mr. Luke: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Bob Russell: No, time is against me.
Does the Minister accept that just because some right hon. and hon. Members were against the war, that does not mean that they do not back their troops? I represent the garrison town in which I grew up, and I challenge the Minister to say whether I back the troops of the Colchester garrison and of the armed forces in general. Of course I do—to suggest otherwise demeans the office of the Secretary of State, who was not supporting the armed forces as a Minister when I was growing up in Colchester. Furthermore, he was certainly not
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defending the armed forces in his previous ministerial job; he was shutting down magistrates courts. I shall be supporting our armed forces long after he has finished being Secretary of State for Defence.
Will the Minister take this opportunity to withdraw the slur that Members, including me, do not back our armed forces, when it is clear that we do? Indeed, the Minister knows first hand that I certainly do.
5.29 pm
Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk) (Con): We have had a long and interesting afternoon, beginning with the Secretary of State's statement on the deployment of troops in Iraq. That has been followed by a good debate, in which colleagues from all parts of the House have spoken with passion and knowledge about defence matters. However, it is fair to say that Iraq has been with us like a giant elephant sitting in the room, and the problem, particularly for the Government, is that it is not going to go away.
There are honourable divisions not only between but within political parties. I want to make it clear from the beginning that I do not believe that just because somebody opposed the war, they are in no way capable of supporting our armed forces. It is obvious that that is not so, and we should make that clear. The divisions are real, and they will continue for as long as the difficult situation in Iraq continues.
I want to say a few brief words about this afternoon's contributions. I pay particular tribute to the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Iain Wright). He spoke incredibly well, and it brought back for us all memories of our own maiden speeches. I hope that we can extend to him an invitation to attend another of these Thursday afternoon defence stocking-fillers. He will be most welcome.
The right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), Chairman of the Defence Committee, made a number of points before he was eventually closed down, but we should all be grateful to him for the work that he and his colleagues do in the course of holding the Government to account. My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) made some powerful points about commitments and capabilities. In particular, it emerged that the Black Watch battlegroup will be moving to the north without any heavy armour or UK air support. It would be interesting to know from the Minister what any support will consist of, and whether the American assets in the coalition will provide it.
The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith) repeated his well-known arguments against nuclear weapons and he had an interesting and frank exchange of law with my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). My hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) spoke with great passion about the regimental system, and as a keen defender of his own regiment, the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment. The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), apart from complimenting the hon. Member for Hartlepool—and, it seemed to me, not complimenting the hon. Gentleman's predecessor—spoke up very strongly for the role played by the north-east, particularly in respect of the Navy, the maritime element in general and local industry.
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The hon. Member for North Tayside (Pete Wishart) spoke with passion about the Black Watch being at risk. He did admit that he had never attended a defence debate before. That speaks volumes. It was a real pleasure to hear again the anti-war, anti-America speech of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), which I think I first heard 30 years ago.
My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East—we Front Benchers miss him as a result of his transfer to another shadow Department—made two powerful points, the first of which concerned platforms and numbers, to which I shall return. He also provided a very interesting checklist on the running requirements for peacekeeping and, above all, for victory in the battle of ideas. We should consider the difference between the divisions that exist in the House today, and which existed in respect of previous conflicts in which we have been involved. In terms of cross-party and public opinion, the armed forces know that they enjoy 80 to 90 per cent. support.
Someone sitting in a barracks somewhere in the UK or serving in Iraq who may be listening to our debates—we know that on Monday troops were watching the Secretary of State's statement in real time—may well be bewildered, to say the least, by the differences of opinion that we have expressed here. They reflect, of course, differences in our society, but it is up to the Government, more than anyone else, to express a clear, understandable strategy and to keep to it. I am afraid to say—I say it with regret—that they have been unable to do so. The muddle over the battlegroup was not just due to the fact that the media have been exploiting it or the Opposition commenting on it. It was a Government-made muddle. If we talk to people in the Black Watch and their families, it becomes easy to appreciate that.
The hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Soley), who has long served the House, made two powerful points. First, he argued that the US is approaching the problem in a very insular way. Secondly, he pointed out that the public—meaning our own public—fear that the situation in Iraq will develop into a Vietnam-style quagmire. I hope that it will not, but it is a powerful point.
Finally, the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) spoke up once again for the Royal Anglian Regiment.
I would like to touch briefly on a few points. Ninety years ago today, the UK was involved in expeditionary warfare as part of another coalition. We sent a British expeditionary force as a junior partner to the French to participate in a short, sharp war in Europe. The then Prime Minister, Asquith, said that the conflict would be over by Christmas. It was assumed that it would be a war of manoeuvre rather than a war of attrition. History does not repeat itself; as Balfour said, "Historians repeat each other". However, although the circumstances and context have changed, the issues have not.
The first issue for us to resolve is the political-military interface. Whatever the arguments about the British Government's decision to send a battlegroup at the request of the American military, it is, of course, not purely a military decision. The ultimate decision has to be political. I would like to say, though, that the Government's real problem is that a large part of British public opinion—and a large number of their own Back
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Benchers—do not believe them. The reason that they do not believe them—this is a tragedy for the UK Government in general and it will apply to the next Government—is that trust has been undermined. That, in turn, has an impact on public opinion and on our troops.
Another 1914 reality is coalition politics and the fact that a junior member of a coalition frequently has to conform to the political direction and the military ethos of the major partner. As the Government spelled out very clearly in "Delivering Security in a Changing World", they were aware of the
"assumption that the most complex large scale operations will only be conducted as part of a US-led coalition."
"Our primary goal is to maximise our ability to influence at all levels the planning, execution and management of the operation and its aftermath, in support of our wider security policy objectives."
I have to put it to the House that many people on both sides of the House, and also the general public, really wonder about what influence we actually have over the United States. I accept the fact that, given that we are a junior member of the coalition, many of the decisions will ultimately be made by the senior partner. However, there remains a real question in our minds about whether—even at the Prime Minister's level in his relations with the President—we have any influence at all on the overall strategy and whether Lieutenant-General John McColl, an able and experienced general, has much influence at the strategic operational level. That problem has been reflected in the sort of questions and worries that have been expressed by hon. Members in the debate, of which, I have to say, the Secretary of State has been rather too dismissive at times.
The next matter to be borne in mind when it comes to the relationship between 1914 and today is the question of attrition and whether we have left that whole world behind. Interestingly, last year's defence White Paper argued that we should
"develop our military capabilities so that we can provide as wide as possible a range of options to fulfil operational objectives without necessarily resorting to traditional attritional warfare."
The word "manoeuvre" sounds wonderful—fast and loose, and as though the other side does not get time to fight and there are no casualties. However, the present conflict in Iraq is attritional at both the political and military levels. The result will be that we will have to put in more resources and that we may have to suffer more casualties. We may not be able to escape that. To Opposition Members, it seems that the rebalancing of our armed forces proposed by Ministers—and there is no doubt that that will mean cuts, regardless of whether the platforms involved are obsolete or not—will risk a reduction in short-term capabilities. In the longer term, many of the systems that Ministers wish to introduce will not be in place for five, six or seven years. That is a very serious risk.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Secretary of State's arguments about large regiments and about doing away with arms plotting, most people outside the House believe that it is totally crazy to think about sending the Black Watch into the firing line only to bring its members back in time for that regiment's disbandment parade.
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The question of logistics represents another parallel between 1914 and today. The Secretary of State was right to emphasise the importance of logistics in modern warfare. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and others pointed out, it is somewhat incredible to claim that personnel from four disbanded infantry regiments will automatically move into posts as logisticians, military policemen and intelligence staff. I simply do not think that that is likely to happen, but the theme running through every House of Commons or Public Accounts Committee report for the past seven years under this Government has been that there has been a massive failure in logistics, whether that be in logistical organisation or the introduction of computers.
I do not underestimate the serious problems involved in moving from an expeditionary force that takes all its logistics with it to one that uses the sort of just-in-time logistics that are required today. However, it seems to me—and to many in today's British Army—that we still rely too much on an approach that inevitably will lead to logistics being just too late.
The Secretary of State must sort out that problem—and he must do so not in four or five years, but in six months to a year. Many military commanders have told many hon. Members that, at times, we will get very close to operational failure. If that happens, the Secretary of State may find that he has to defend it at the Dispatch Box.
This debate about defence in the world has been dominated by Iraq. The first message that we need to send out is that although there are divisions in this House and within political parties about the policies that should be adopted in respect of Iraq, we support our armed forces and their families, and what they are going to do for us in the next six months to a year. Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East said, we must make it clear that we expect a better articulation by the Government of their policy and vision for Iraq. Thirdly, the Secretary of State—who, with his usual courtesy, has been talking throughout most of my speech—must ensure that he does not become known as "complacent Hoon" in the history books.
5.45 pm
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