Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 139)
TUESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2004
MR GEOFFREY
HOON MP
Q120 Chairman: Welcome, Secretary
of State, and apologies to the people who have come to listen
to this session for the 20 minute delay. Unfortunately we had
to vote twice and it was not worth really coming back for the
three or four minute session for the first question and then rushing
off again. With the new hours it happens all too frequently. Now,
we have about 15 questions and you are leaving at 5.30 so it does
not take a genius to work out it is going to be about five minutes
per question, so we are going to have to be rather disciplined,
Secretary of State. Is there anything you would like to say by
way of starting?
Mr Hoon: No. I think, given the
time, we can get straight on.
Q121 Chairman: The first question
relates to the timing and the processing of the request to deploy.
Before the request for British military assistance on 10 October,
had there been any previous requests from the United States for
United Kingdom troops to take on responsibilities outside their
designated area?
Mr Hoon: In general terms?
Q122 Chairman: In general terms.
Mr Hoon: Not the specific deployment?
Q123 Chairman: No, in general
terms. Other deployments?
Mr Hoon: If the Committee will
forgive me, I really do not think it is right that I should give
a running commentary about the kind of discussions that take place
on a routine basis between allies. I would obviously inform Parliament
where there were consequences for British forces at the earliest
opportunity, but I do not think it is right or helpful that, every
time there are informal contacts or discussions between allies,
that is a matter that I feel that I should report to you. I hope
the Committee will understand why I do not think it is appropriate
to give that kind of running commentary.
Q124 Chairman: Will you tell
us in private, or will you not tell us?
Mr Hoon: I think it would be a
matter that we could discuss confidentially but I think where
there are discussions between allies it is only right and fair,
as far as the other parties to those discussions are concerned,
that those matters should remain confidential. It is one of the
exceptions, of course, to the Freedom of Information legislation.
Q125 Chairman: We do not want
to wait that long to find out! But, on the other hand, if a Committee
of the House of Commons has questions to ask they would need to
be answered so if you are not going to tell us you will not tell
us but I think I would say personally that I shall put in a request
to you, Secretary of State, for a private session—
Mr Hoon: I would be perfectly
willing to brief the Committee on that basis.
Chairman:—and you will tell us
then, and as we have not been deployed before this time perhaps
you could tell us why any request was declined. But we can discuss
the usual channels as to location of meeting. Right. We will go
on to Dai Havard for the second question.
Q126 Mr Havard: If I could turn
to this particular request, then, the request as we understand
it was made on 10 October but it seems unlikely that there were
not some informal discussions before then, especially given it
seems to be capable of being fulfilled by the reserve battalion
of the British. So what informal discussions had taken place before
the 10th about this particular mission, and at what levels had
that taken place?
Mr Hoon: I am pretty confident
that the Foreign Secretary has indicated that on a visit to Baghdad
he was told there was some discussion in very general terms about
a possible redeployment of British forces, but I can only give
you evidence of what my knowledge was and my first state of knowledge
came with the communication of the formal request.
Q127 Mr Havard: So given there
had been some discussion, at whatever macro level, had there been
any discussions, for example, about the command and control arrangements
there would be, or whether or not the recce trips would take place
sooner rather than later, because a request is one thing but at
the feasibility meeting the request has to be assessed and the
arrangements sorted, so what happened as far as that was concerned?
Mr Hoon: Well, that process was
carried on once the formal request had been received. I think
I set out to Parliament in the course of my first statement about
this issue the nature of the process that we anticipated following.
Q128 Mr Havard: So you were
informed, then, first about this after this discussion that had
taken place with the Foreign Secretary?
Mr Hoon: What I said was, and
I am not quite sure off the top of my head whether the Foreign
Secretary was in Baghdad but I am aware that he became aware of
this possibility in the course of his visit, as you might expect.
We have the Second in Command of the multinational force. If such
an issue was around and being discussed amongst the military there,
it is not surprising that he became aware of it, but I can only
give you my knowledge as far as my own awareness of this formal
request was concerned, and that came on 10 October.
Q129 Mr Havard: Well, in terms
of this particular deployment, then, in agreeing to this what
influence was there over the shape and the nature of the operation
that both the British were, if you like, going to become a part
of and which the Americans were about to conduct and needed assistance
with?
Mr Hoon: The nature of the request
was to free up an American equivalent-sized battle group for operations
other than in the particular location in which The Black Watch
are now redeployed.
Q130 Mr Havard: But what I am
trying to get at is to what extent did we involve ourselves, the
British that is, in terms of deciding that plan that the Americans
were involved in? As I understand the mission, the mission effectively
is—well, I do not want this to sound wrong but they are
rat catchers, are they not, in the sense that they are covering
an area between the west of the Euphrates and this Lake Buhayrat
Ar Razazah, and effectively there are rat runs in and out into
which there are munitions and goodness knows what going in and
out of Fallujah. So there are interdict operations, presumably;
they are looking at the ground and trying to protect, and when
any mission takes place in Fallujah they will then catch presumably
the rats running out down the rat runs and protect that. What
I am trying to get at is you have said this is a discrete mission
that will last—what, up to eight weeks? Six weeks?
Mr Hoon: Thirty days.
Q131 Mr Havard: Okay, so it
is a discrete mission, so it will have mission objectives, it
will have some sort of end-state, they will try and decide where
their centre of gravity is and what they are achieving, so what
is this that they are trying to achieve? What is the end-state
they are trying to achieve? Is it to do some of the things I have
described or what is it, and when were we involved in deciding
the shape and form of that activity?
Mr Hoon: Actually what they are
doing, if you think about it, is not that different from what
they have been doing in the south already. They are there, dominating
a particular area, doing some of what you describe undoubtedly
in the event of there being any heightened activity surrounding
other operations elsewhere, but essentially their job is to maintain
stability in a particular defined, precisely defined area, and
that is precisely what they have been doing in the south.
Q132 Mr Havard: So that is it.
It is to go and try and stabilise that particular area, and that
is the objective in the mission, that is the end-state, if they
can achieve that for the period they are there and then withdraw.
So that was our bit of the shape of the overall mission, was it?
Mr Hoon: As I made clear to Parliament,
we would anticipate, in the course of that redeployment, heightened
activity as a result of operations by the Iraqis and the Americans
to deal with the terrorist threat in places like Fallujah, but
not necessarily exclusively Fallujah.
Mr Havard: Thank you.
Q133 Mr Viggers: Would you agree
that this deployment has been surrounded by much more publicity
than you, we or the troops would have liked?
Mr Hoon: I guess it is inevitable
in the heightened interest in relation to Iraq always going to
be a great deal of speculation. I think perhaps it is something
the Committee might want to reflect on: whether in the interests
of trying to give soldiers and their families as much warning
as possible there then is the level of publicity that, by implication,
you are criticising. That is part of what we have to deal with
in the modern world. Whether that is always helpful I leave the
Committee to judge.
Q134 Mr Viggers: Would you have
preferred to have made no statement until after the deployment
was finished?
Mr Hoon: I have a constitutional
obligation, which I hope I have always respected, to inform Parliament
about major deployments of British forces, and I would have expected
to do that. It certainly would have been easier from my point
of view had I been able to say something specific rather than
to indicate the possibility of such a deployment occurring.
Q135 Mr Viggers: To what extent
do you think that your hand was forced by information which is
passed back to families from troops on the ground, and is it inevitable
these days that that information will get out because of the availability
of mobile phones and other means of communication?
Mr Hoon: My hand was not forced
in terms of having to make a statement; I would have anticipated
making a statement surrounding a significant redeployment of British
forces. I felt that it was right to make a statement to Parliament
on the Monday because of the speculation, so to that extent I
suppose I was responding to media comment—some of which
was accurate, a great deal of which was not.
Q136 Mr Viggers: Focusing on
the messages back from troops and people in the area, do you think
that it is possible to contain that, or is it something you will
have to live with in all future deployments?
Mr Hoon: I think it is clear that
you cannot contain that and I am not even sure it would be appropriate
to do so. We put a great deal of store by, for example, providing
free telephone calls back from even quite difficult theatres like
Iraq from time to time. I think it is inevitable that in the modern
world of communication that information will flow back. We have
had journalists in deployed forces; they are reporting back often
in real time.
Q137 Mr Viggers: But there will
be occasions when it is crucially important that information should
not get out in advance of a deployment?
Mr Hoon: Of course.
Q138 Mr Viggers: One has to
face that at the appropriate time, I suppose. Thank you, Chairman.
Mr Hoon: I would certainly be
interested, Chairman, in the views the Committee will have about
that because it is a constant challenge to the Ministry of Defence
and how to deal with it. We would be criticised if we did not
forewarn troops of the possibility of deployment; we are equally
criticised when we do and that then leaks out into the world as
it inevitably will, so it is a proper subject for the Committee
to set out their views upon. I would be very interested in what
you think.
Q139 Mr Hancock: Has the 30
days started ticking on the clock? That 30 days, as far as you
are concerned, about the length of this deployment started from
when?
Mr Hoon: The Black Watch achieved
full operational capability today.
| 
