Examination of Witnesses (Questions 2300
- 2319)
THURSDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2004
RT HON
GEOFFREY HOON
MP
Q2300 Mr Viggers: My question
was whether the budgetary shortfall will affect your ability to
deal with the lessons of Operation Telic. Can I take it a little
further? Will you need to be making short-term programme cuts,
like cutting helicopter flying hours, overseas training, live
firing of weapons, vehicle movements to save fuel, etc?
Mr Hoon: There is always a programme
of activity that in any given financial year has to be adjusted
according to the financial reality, and particularly towards the
end of the financial year there are those kinds of adjustments.
They are done every year in the Ministry of Defence, they have
been done every year since time immemorial, and that may have
some of the implications that you describe.
Q2301 Mr Havard: We have got
very little time. Can I just turn to this body armour question
simply from the point of view that there is a balance of risk
assessment that has to be done. Perhaps you can write to us if
we do not have the time because we would like to know how the
legal processes and other factors are balanced in making this
balance of risk assessment? Quite clearly intelligence comes into
that as well. As far as the body armour is concerned, what we
now know from the incident is that the front line is everywhere,
the front line is in no one place any more. This is a different
thing we now know that we did not know before. Is it going to
be the case that everyone in future who enters into a conflict
situation will have all the proper kit, including the body armour,
because it was clearly done on the basis of those in greatest
need in this exercise but the world is changing?
Mr Hoon: I think that is a very
fair point and please bear in mind that was the assumption we
made when 38,000 sets of enhanced combat body armour were sent
to theatre for operations in Iraq, we had made that judgment.
You are right to emphasise the fact that front line in these kinds
of operations, when the front line is moving very rapidly across
large areas of territory, as the Americans found themselves, the
front line is everywhere and we want to provide proper protection
for all our people, whether they happen to be in the notional
front line or they are in the supply lines, for example, or logistic
trade.
Q2302 Mr Havard: Would you
write to us about the balancing of the risks and the processes
involved?
Mr Hoon: My point is that we took
that decision, we were not balancing risk in that sense as far
as the decision to provide enhanced combat body armour to all
those engaged. The issue, as I have made clear, was the issue
of tracking that equipment once it got in the theatre and I am
determined that we should improve that asset tracking system.
Q2303 Mr Havard: They had
better put it in their back pocket next time.
Mr Hoon: I would be interested
in what the Committee considers, whether it has had this conversation
with soldiers, because one solution that has been suggested is
to make enhanced combat body armour part of the personal equipment
of the soldiers concerned but it does mean, of course, that in
addition to all the other kit that they are required to be responsible
for, they then have to be responsible for the enhancement. I do
not know how many Members of the Committee have worn enhanced
combat body armour for even a short period of time. It is something
that is a judgment that will have to be made about whether we
require that because my experience of talking to officers and,
indeed, to senior NCOs is that part of their task when enhanced
combat body armour is issued is to make sure that the men under
their charge are wearing it.
Q2304 Mr Havard: I agree that
it is a complex issue and there are certain walls I can get over
in it and there are some I cannot, it is that sort of thing. I
appreciate that. Maybe we should change it to the individuals
to make the decision rather than the Ministry of Defence. It is
certainly an area that I would hope in the Lessons Learned
exercise is having serious consideration.
Mr Hoon: It is something that
we are looking at. As I say, I do not think it is quite that simple.
It is probably relatively straightforward for civilians to say
that this should be part of the personal kit of all soldiers but
I am not sure that necessarily all members of the military would
readily agree to that. I think it is something that we have got
to look at and I would be very interested in what the Committee's
experience has been in this area.
Chairman: You will be pleased to know
that none of the general issue body armour fitted me. However,
there was a corpulent MoD policeman of my girth whose suit I borrowed
and I must say he needs to get into a bit of training if he is
that size, although I must thank him for the loan of his body
armour.
Q2305 Rachel Squire: Can I
pick up again on NBC protection which you mentioned in your opening
statement and which has been referred to in our questions so far,
Secretary of State. You are very aware of the criticisms that
the NAO made reporting a significant shortfall of 40% in tactical
nerve agent detection systems and a severe shortfall in residual
vapour detector kits, commenting that, "While these shortfalls
could be partially mitigated by the use of the Chemical Agent
Monitor and training, it made detection and therefore response
to an attack insufficient". It also then went on to talk
about the NBC protection for Challenger 2 and other armoured vehicles
and was somewhat critical of it. I know that you told the House
on 13 January this year that: "we have acknowledged in our
own reports that there were deficiencies in the way stocks of
some NBC equipment were managed. The Department is working hard
to ensure that that does not occur again. However, as the NAO
recognises in its report, mitigating action was taken through
a combination of purchasing spare parts and rigorous re-testing
of equipment. The operational requirement was consequently fully
met." Can I try and pin you down a bit. When you talk about
the "operational requirement" being consequently fully
met, can you explain to what level of protection the operational
requirement was set to enable you to say that it was fully met
in spite of the shortfall that you yourself have recognised and
which certainly the NAO recognised?
Mr Hoon: If I can begin with the
conclusion of the NAO report. It states: "Although overall
protection against chemical agents was good, there were shortfalls".
I simply prefer to start with the conclusion rather than the shortfalls.
That may be just the way that I happen to see this. I am not in
any way under-estimating the concern that we had to ensure that
each person involved in the operation was properly protected against
the risk of a chemical attack. It is my understanding that everyone
who went over the line had a respirator and at least one correctly
sized suit. One of the issues, and I know this has caused some
controversy, is whether there were a sufficient number of suits
available, whether each man had three suits available, which ideally
should be the case. A judgment was made that it was sufficient
for the conduct of this operation that initially at any rate as
they crossed the line, the availability to each man of one suit,
correctly sized suit, was sufficient to allow them to conduct
this particular operation.
Q2306 Rachel Squire: I, and
I am sure I was not alone in this, believed that Saddam Hussein
was more than likely to use chemical and possibly biological material
against the coalition forces. Are you clearly saying that in spite
of the identified shortfalls, if British land forces had been
subject to an NBC attack it would not have any operational consequences?
Mr Hoon: I am not quite sure that
is the same thing. There are clearly operational consequences
of coming under chemical or biological attack, I do not think
anyone is in any doubt that that has a severe impact on the ability,
for example, to conduct offensive operations. I am now talking
about in a military sense. What I am saying is that as far as
the protection available in the event of such an attack, each
man had a respirator and one correctly sized suit. In addition,
there were a number of other areas that were appropriate for the
threat that we faced. That is why the NAO report came to the conclusion
that it did. It actually said that the overall protection against
chemical agents was good. It did not say that it was average or
indifferent, it said that it was good. That was not my assessment,
that was their conclusion having considered the evidence.
Q2307 Rachel Squire: Perhaps
for me to be more specific, you are saying that if chemical weapons
had been used against our troops, the equipment they had was sufficient
not to put them at greater risk than was necessary?
Mr Hoon: That is right, yes.
Mr Hancock: I am going to ask you some
questions about the post-war situation but, if I may, can I ask
one about the pre-war situation. You told us on 14 May—
Chairman: No, sorry.
Mr Hancock: This is a question relating
to it.
Chairman: If it is post-conflict, please.
Mr Hancock: It is a very important question.
Chairman: If it is post-conflict, yes.
Mr Hancock: Do we have to only ask questions
that the clerk has drawn up?
Chairman: Post-conflict.
Mr Hancock: Chairman, this is an important
issue as far as I am concerned. Secretary of State, I would like
you to tell us—
Chairman: We have five minutes. Post-conflict,
Mike.
Mr Hancock: So you do not want a difficult
question?
Chairman: Mike, please, post-conflict,
five minutes.
Mr Hancock: You have spent most of your
time trying to avoid getting into the difficult questions.
Chairman: That is not true. Please, post-conflict.
You have questions to ask.
Mr Hancock: If we are going to have a
report on this war, Chairman, surely one of the questions is about
the process that led up to it.
Chairman: You are wasting time.
Mr Hancock: Secretary of State, my question
is quite a simple one. You told us on 14 May that you had identified
500 sites—
Chairman: Michael, I am not accepting
this. You are wasting time. Please ask the questions you have
been asked to do.
Mr Hancock: Well, I cannot possibly be
in a position to accept the report then.
Chairman: Try.
Mr Hancock: I think you are doing a good
job trying to defend the impossible.
Mr Blunt: Point of Order, Chairman. I
think people outside will find it incomprehensible that Members
of this Committee are not able to ask the questions they wish.
Mr Hancock: Absolutely.
Chairman: I think they will find it incomprehensible
that we have so many questions to ask and—
Mr Blunt: May I finish?
Chairman: Please be quick.
Mr Blunt: My Point of Order, Chairman,
is that Members must be allowed untrammelled freedom to ask the
questions that they want to ask.
Chairman: We are here to ask the Secretary
of State questions. We have four questions left. Please, post-conflict.
We have five minutes to ask a lot of questions.
Mr Hancock: Are we not elected to this
Parliament to ask questions that we think are in the public interest
as opposed to ones that the clerk wants us to ask?
Chairman: We have a lot of questions
to ask, Michael, and you have wasted five minutes.
Mr Hancock: Well, you should have let
me ask the damn thing.
Chairman: Post-conflict questions, please.
Mr Hancock: If you stopped waffling on
and trying to—
Chairman: Conflict questions, please.
Are you going to ask the post-conflict questions?
Mr Hancock: No, Chairman.
Chairman: I will ask them.
Mr Hancock: I would rather ask the question
that I am sure the Secretary of State would be only too willing
to answer and I am not going to be browbeaten into asking questions
that the clerk wants to be asked rather than an elected Member
of Parliament.
Chairman: Which we want to ask. Please,
post-conflict.
Mr Hancock: You ask the bloody question
because I am not.
Chairman: Mike Gapes, please.
Q2308 Mike Gapes: You have
said already that the Iraqi regime's domination and collapse at
the end when it went was unexpected in the way that it went but
had we not known for years about the nature of Ba'athism and the
repression? Given that the regime did collapse in the way it did,
how do you explain your Department's position that it was only
after the fall of the regime that the extent of the Ba'ath domination
and nearly all aspects of the Iraqi state and society became clear?
Mr Hoon: I am not sure that I
said it was unexpected. It certainly collapsed more rapidly than
we, on a worst case scenario, thought. We might have expected
the implants into the army, for example, who certainly had some
effect on some of the leaders. One Iraqi general surrendered and
then we understand as a result of threats to his family, who were
kept in another part of the country, he then continued to fight.
Large parts of the Iraqi army simply deserted but we were still
left with some really quite uncompromising enemies. In Basra,
we all followed very carefully the excellent operation to take
Basra but the people that we were fighting against were essentially
the most committed of Saddam's people, and are probably still
the people who are causing a security threat in and around Baghdad.
Those were people who benefited from the regime, who were its
strongest supporters and who carried out the intimidation against
the Iraqi population that we are all well aware of.
Q2309 Mike Gapes: Did you
plan for the looting and the destruction which came after the
collapse? Did you expect it? What plans had you got to prevent
it?
Mr Hoon: It was one of the contingencies
that we knew could occur. I suspect that we did not have sufficient
numbers of troops to be able to prevent the extent of the looting
that did take place. That would have required us to be able to
replace all of the police and security personnel that Saddam Hussein
had available. I recall when I very first went into Iraq, two
or three weeks after the conflict came to an end, talking to Iraqis
who were actually complaining that we did not have soldiers on
every corner. They were used to having a police officer on every
corner. I do not know whether in Basra you saw the small places
that existed almost on every street corner. I initially took them
to be for traffic police but they were there as a visible, tangible
sign that the regime was keeping an eye on you and the complaint
of a lot of people was that we were not replacing that.
Q2310 Mike Gapes: Can I put
it to you then that what you are really saying is that looting
was inevitable and we had insufficient forces there to stop it.
Mr Hoon: In the very short-term.
Eventually we were able to get a grip on that, but not in the
very short-term.
Q2311 Mike Gapes: Given that
was the case, why did you decide to protect some buildings and
not others? What choices did you make because there has been some
criticism that oilfields were protected but museums were not and
various other things of that kind? How did you make the decision
to deploy to the areas you could protect knowing that you could
not protect everywhere?
Mr Hoon: I think very pragmatic
decisions were taken. One of the entire purposes, for example,
of the planning of our operations in the south was to prevent
Saddam Hussein destroying the oilfields. The whole point of a
rapid attack in the south was to get to the oilfields and prevent
them from being destroyed in the way that had happened previously.
That was part of the strategic consideration that we made in looking
at how best to take Iraq and defeat Saddam Hussein and at the
same time prevent him from destroying a vital part of the livelihood
of his country and it was a magnificent success.
Q2312 Mike Gapes: Were there
instructions explicitly from the MoD to the military commanders
to protect the oilfields?
Mr Hoon: We knew, and it would
have had some strategic impact on our capability, that on a previous
occasion Saddam Hussein had set fire to oilfields. That had a
strategic impact because the clouds that were produced were extremely
damaging. We judged that one impact of him doing that would be
to weaken our ability to fight successfully. As part of longer
term thinking about Iraq we also knew that the oilfields were
vital to the future of Iraq and if he was able to destroy those
oilfields then that would obviously necessarily make the process
of reconstruction all the more difficult. There were both military
considerations and, if you like, reconstruction considerations
in that judgment borne out of experience. This was what he did
in the Gulf War.
Q2313 Mike Gapes: Did you
give instructions to commanders to protect other parts of the
infrastructure, hospitals, electricity, communication hubs, or
was it just left to their own judgment?
Mr Hoon: To the extent that it
was possible certainly but, again, electricity infrastructure
is an enormously difficult thing, even today, to protect. We have
many people in place but out there in the desert, and you may
have seen it for yourself when you travelled from Kuwait, it only
takes one attack against a pylon to destroy the infrastructure.
That is one of the difficulties that we continue to have. There
have been continuing acts of—vandalism does not quite do
it justice—sabotage against the utility system. That was
a problem right from the beginning and I think we are getting
on top of that and the electricity is steadily improving but it
is still an issue.
Q2314 Mr Cran: Still on post-conflict.
Throughout the conflict the Government fairly consistently said
that it was not going to be able to give us figures about civilian
casualties and all the rest of it. As I understand it, that was
reversed by Baroness Symons in the House of Lords on 28 January
when she said that the Prime Minister is concerned about it, is
getting more figures, we will do our best to get accurate figures.
The question is which department is doing this? If it is yours,
what progress have we made and what is the timescale?
Mr Hoon: I certainly recall recently
answering Parliamentary Questions and making it clear that trying
to assess civilian casualties, not least in areas that we did
not control, is a very, very difficult exercise.
Q2315 Mr Cran: I entirely
understand that but nonetheless a commitment was given by Baroness
Symons in the House of Lords, Minister of State at the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office. If the commitment was given, who is doing
it?
Mr Hoon: I am sure she will be
able to tell you.
Q2316 Mr Cran: You are saying
that you cannot, which I find quite extraordinary.
Mr Hoon: Whether you find it extraordinary
or not, I have made clear and, indeed, I think I have said this
in a Parliamentary Answer, that trying to provide accurate assessments
of civilian casualties at a time when we were engaged in conflict
and not in control of the territory where perhaps some of those
civilian casualties occurred is an extraordinarily difficult process.
Q2317 Mr Cran: I do not disagree
with that but I find it extraordinary because of all the agencies
that could help to make this promise come true: it might be the
authority in Baghdad and Basra, and the armed forces of the United
Kingdom and the United States. You are a member of Cabinet, tell
me, if you cannot do it, who is doing it?
Mr Hoon: I am not saying that
we can do it, what I am saying is that it is difficult. I am certainly
prepared to assist in that effort if it can produce a realistic
and useful result.
Q2318 Mr Cran: But as a member
of Cabinet you do not know who is doing it?
Mr Hoon: I am saying that we will
provide assistance.
Mr Cran: Quite extraordinary.
Chairman: James is an ex-Whip, he knows
how to count bodies and knows where they are buried as well. Crispin?
Q2319 Mr Blunt: Secretary
of State, when I was last asking you questions you raised the
advice of the military that they could cross the start line into
action with one NBC suit per individual and that the advice was
that they would be able to fight the tanks and fight from the
Warrior armoured personnel cars on that basis. Can I suggest to
you, Secretary of State, that that is an example of the military
being willing to undertake risks in order to achieve military
objectives. Equally, I am quite certain that had you invited them
to do so they would have crossed the start line with no NBC protection
had that been the objective of the forces. They would have taken
that risk and done their duty as they should have done. What I
would say to you is that soldiers in the Royal Armoured Corps,
of which I had the privilege to be one for 12 years, will tell
you that to suggest you can fight from a tank in an NBC suit for
a prolonged period of time, frankly if you have the opportunity
of having proper NBC filters and over-pressure inside the tank,
is simply unfeasible for any length of time.
Mr Hoon: Is that a question?
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