UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 65-v

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

DEFENCE COMMITTEE

 

 

IRAQ

 

 

Wednesday 9 February 2005

RT HON ADAM INGRAM MP, MAJOR GENERAL NICK HOUGHTON

and DR ROGER HUTTON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 114

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee

on Wednesday 9 February 2005

Members present

Mr Bruce George, in the Chair

Mr James Cran

Mr Mike Hancock

Mr Dai Havard

Richard Ottaway

Mr Frank Roy

Mr Peter Viggers

________________

Witnesses: Mr Adam Ingram, a Member of the House, Armed Forces Minister, Major General Nick Houghton CBE, Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operations) and Dr Roger Hutton, Director, Joint Commitments, Ministry of Defence, examined.

Q1 Chairman: Minister, welcome to you and your team. This session is the last session of the Committee's Iraq inquiry, possibly the Committee's last session this Parliament. This morning we took evidence from DFID, we did not learn a great deal I might add, because we realise that judging the war by the military campaign alone is not the full picture. This afternoon we have the last opportunity of questioning the ministerial team in the form of yourself, Minister of State. The Prime Minister indicated to the Liaison Committee yesterday that a review of our approach to Iraq, which is tied to the Luck Report, will take place and will be published shortly. I do not know whether you are aware of that but we have documentary evidence to justify what he said, in fact. We will look forward to hearing more about this in the course of our afternoon's session. If I might start off, how do you expect relations with an Iraqi Government led by perhaps the United Shia List to develop, considering that a number of its leaders have voiced serious concerns about the coalition, its presence and tactics?

Mr Ingram: First of all, apologies that the Secretary of State could not come to this session. You know he is engaged elsewhere. He would have liked to have been here for this session.

Q2 Chairman: We did exchange views in the division lobby last night.

Mr Ingram: The boxing gloves were off.

Q3 Chairman: You were referee.

Mr Ingram: That is right. Anyway, it seems to me that in terms of politicians - and most of us around the table are politicians - they will look at what is the best advantage to win the best majority. Now there is clearly, I would guess, an attitude within Iraq that they want their country back, not unsurprisingly. A particularly significant proportion of them will be very grateful for all that has been achieved but nonetheless they are proud people, they want their country back and they want to govern themselves. Of course that is what we have been progressively delivering for them. The election, as you know, was a very significant step, it does not solve every problem, no election ever does because then government has to follow on from that and the shape and form of that government has still to be determined. It does not surprise me that the language being used is one to try and gain the maximum advantage amongst the population. I do not think that is a cynical use of populism, or however it is to be defined, but it is a realistic assessment of it. The reality, of course, is that those who have the leadership role within those parties at whatever senior level, not obviously all of them but the key players, recognise that there is a need to maintain stability and security within their own country. Therefore, the continuing presence of the coalition force while they build up their own capability and capacity is something which they are more than prepared to accept and welcome. I think there are two messages in there. One is that this is about politicians trying to gain best political advantage, it is not a homogenous group of politicians, they represent different interests, different traditions and unquestionably in any coalition arrangements a lot of negotiations will be going on to try and buy the best advantage over one's political opponents. That language is out there for some of those reasons but I think the reality rests somewhere else and the reality is the continuing effort that we are making both in dealing with the insurgency which is there, which represents a very small percentage of what is going on in Iraq, insurgency which is not welcomed by the majority of Iraqis, they would want to see an end to that as well, and also in terms of building the capacity, in terms of their own security force whether it is police or military terms. They know this is not going to happen overnight but they make the point, also, that if the Iraqis do not want us to be there, we will not be there.

Q4 Chairman: You put your money on us being there for some indeterminate time?

Mr Ingram: I think realistically the answer to that would be yes. Obviously we will cover this during this session. Hopefully the more the UN engages with us - and remember that we are there under UN mandate and carrying out the wishes of the UN in that sense - the more the UN begins to engage, of course, as we move towards the end of the UN mandate towards the end of the year, as we go through the review process of all this, there will be greater clarity as to what the future holds. It is determined by the Iraqis themselves, we are not imposing our presence, we are there because they want us to be there and I think they will want us to be there for some time ahead.

Q5 Chairman: The Iranian Government's influence could be quite significant on the new regime, as there were parties such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which did quite well and will probably have a significant number of seats, not the majority but a significant number. I know it is a delicate subject, Minister, but do you look with some concern at a pro-Iranian party? They are not the Liberal Democrats, for God's sake, they are a minority that is part of the system, it might be a significant minority that is not truly a part of the system but they may have an obligation to their counterparts in Iran. Do you have any anxieties that they might exercise a disproportionate influence and may not wish to see the Americans and the British remain in their country because they have obligations elsewhere?

Mr Ingram: I think it would be wrong for us to start saying what is good and what is bad in terms of the political structure in an open way. We can have a view on all this and that would apply anywhere where we have a presence. What we cannot do is micro-manage or even macro-manage to a conclusion we want because that is in contradiction to what we are seeking to do anyway, which is to say: "This is your country, your problem, your political process has to resolve all this". I think we can take a lot of encouragement from Prime Minister Allawi's statement about the reconciliation and the need to reach out. There are some indications which tell us that the Sunni groups and the Sunni community may have realised they got it wrong over the elections because the elections by any measurement were a success. Sunnis clearly engaged, but if there is a wish in that we would have wanted to see greater engagement by the Sunnis. Now, we have some indication that they recognise that perhaps that was a better route for them. In terms of how the new government is formed, and of course people can be appointed into that government, and the training will go on, as inevitably it will in terms of any coalition, from a Labour Party which probably does not have much experience of a coalition government, you are right, we would have to refer to the Liberal Democrats but they have more and more to tell us on all this, how they work the magic in achieving a position coming from a minority to have a point of influence. That will be going on in Iraq, there is no question at all about this. The public statements as well as the private indications show a willingness to try and make it as all encompassing as it possibly can be. Are there worries out there? There must be worries. If a conclusion is not reached, if it begins to fragment, then that will be the greater worry rather than a preponderance or a domination of one over another because if that is an accepted position - how the coalition is formed - if one particular group has a greater presence, that ends up as a matter for them. Our key concern is to ensure some sort of unity of purpose and the retention of Iraq as a whole country. We know there are others who are arguing that is not necessarily desirable but in any democracy people have the right to express their opinion and that is what we have given the people of Iraq.

Q6 Chairman: I am glad you have given that response. I asked that question as an agent provocateur. The next question I want to ask you is out of sequence but it is very relevant. You know the Committee produced a couple of reports on pensions and compensation. We are not well pleased with the document that emerged. I asked the Prime Minister yesterday in the Liaison Committee a speculative question on the fact that the bodies of the soldiers killed on polling day were being returned and was he happy with the arrangements for the injured military personnel and their families. His reply intrigued me - I will not put you on the spot in case the policy has not developed - the Prime Minister said this: "Well, we have studied very carefully what the Defence Committee has said about this and, as you know, we are reviewing the situation now and I hope that we will be able to say something about that in the days and weeks to come. I would once again like to state my sympathy and condolences to the families of the RAF and other people that have died in the Hercules crash." I said "Well, Adam Ingram is appearing before the Defence Committee tomorrow, Prime Minister. Maybe you can have a word with him to clarify a bit further what you have been saying. I doubt it, but we can hope." Did I say that? How cynical of me. Lastly, the Prime Minister said "I do not think we will have to wait very long for it, but there are various issues that need to be decided there, but we do want to make sure ...". I said: "Will it be a new package of some kind?" The Prime Minister said "I hope it will be a new package, yes". Can you titillate us and give us a preview of what might be coming out of your illustrious organisation in the next few weeks or months?

Mr Ingram: I think it would be wrong to be too definitive in all this. In a sense we are chasing headlines here, I am not saying there is not an issue out there but there is a lot of headline grabbing and a lot of headline writing which is not necessarily based upon an accurate assessment of what is happening. I know we have a difference between what we have done and what you think should have been done. If you look at how we treat, say, married and indeed unmarried personnel with dependants, the benefits which flow to our people are as good if not better than those which will apply in the United States. We are not comparing two similar schemes in any event because part of the US scheme is an insurance based scheme. There is one area - and we can give you figures to show this - where we have done the calculations, I do not know if you want me to give you some examples of this. Just taking married personnel with dependants, and taking a UK corporal - if I do it in dollars that is the best comparator - under the old scheme, that which goes out on 1 April this year, the existing scheme, the payment would be $824,720, under the new scheme it will be $897,075. The US equivalent for that would be $492,000 and under their new arrangement $730,000. We are better, and it improves through the rank structure because it is income based. When we get to the single serving soldier under our existing scheme - again using the corporal as a base line - the payment would be $44,300 and that will increase under the new scheme that is coming in to $167,275. The US equivalent, interestingly, under their existing scheme, before they made the announcement, was $12,420. We were significantly better if we compare existing schemes to existing schemes. However, what they have got now, of course, has improved that considerably and the pay out is a quarter of a million dollars. Clearly we have to look at this but it is the make up of that and how that is arrived at and, if we are going to go down that road, how we achieve an improvement in that area. The other aspect is how far back do we go? No matter where a line is drawn there is going to be some before that line who say "Why should we be discriminated against" because that is how people will view this. This is not an easy process to take through. If it is a case of always chasing the best, if somebody else comes along with a better scheme, then we will be faced with the same headlines "Why are we not doing what another ally is doing who is working alongside us?" We have to be careful how we judge our conclusions in this both in terms of retrospection and in terms of the structure of the scheme and then what the pay out levels will be. We are not unsympathetic to it but we recognise the importance of this and we do genuinely value very highly our people and we try to reflect that. We would argue that is what the new pension arrangements seek to achieve, a better recognition of all of this, an improvement of one to one and a half of salary to four times salary. We have made a major step change and of course along has come this change in the US. For instance, I do not know whether in the US they consider as favourably unmarried partners and dependants as we do. There may be areas where we are better than them, I have pointed out an area where we are better than them, and there may be more areas in all this. That is why I think there is an unfairness in the reporting. It is almost as if we are uncaring, we are not, we care deeply about all this and it is how we value it. We have put a significant value on the way in which we deal with it because there are weaknesses and shortfalls in our current scheme and that is why we spent so long studying it to make it better and to give a structure for the future which will last well into the future but along has come this new demand which we will have to take consideration of.

Q7 Chairman: Finally, from me, I have given you a chance of a dummy run, with the argument which you will have to use when the boss calls for you and asks you why you have not been following the remarks he made.

Mr Ingram: I am very grateful. If it could be written into the minute, I am very grateful for the way in which you referred to the fact that I was coming to the Committee today.

Chairman: Always helpful.

Q8 Mr Viggers: The Prime Minister commented on the handover of control after the Iraqi General Elections and the withdrawal of troops. Later the Prime Minister's spokesman said the Prime Minister was setting out "a timeline, rather than a timescale". It maybe, of course, that the words are not that meaningful but is there a profundity there which is not readily available to the casual observer?

Mr Ingram: I think there is, timescales tend to have drop dead dates on them, do they not? It tends to be by 30 March, 1 April or 30 September or whenever and that is how I would view it. I do not know precisely how the Prime Minister would answer this question, but I think he would articulate it in the same way, hopefully.

Q9 Richard Ottaway: Perhaps.

Mr Ingram: I hope that would be the case. Timescales are very specific dates. Timelines are aspirational, this is the process by which we would be looking at this. We say that there is a six month period of change likely to take place but we do not say "In the first month we will achieve this, in the third month we will achieve that". I think maybe that is the difference. I think it is the right use of the word timelines and it is a way we would seek to operate because there are no certainties in what we are doing in this area, as there are no certainties in the Balkans or in Northern Ireland or anywhere else for that matter.

Q10 Mr Viggers: Looking at the evolution of the role, can you confirm that the Extremely High Readiness Reserve, formed I think by the First Battalion Royal Fusiliers, will be returning to their base in Cyprus at the end of this month?

Mr Ingram: That is the plan, yes. We are setting that and we are holding to that.

Q11 Mr Viggers: Do you anticipate it will be necessary for us to deploy further troops to make up for the troops which have been withdrawn by five nations?

Mr Ingram: No, we have no plans to do so. What we have done, as we have announced, in terms of the Dutch and the Dutch withdrawal, we have taken on a contingent responsibility there.

Major General Houghton: 240 initially, and it will come down to about 190 when those initial numbers come down.

Q12 Mr Viggers: Do you see any other significant evolution or changes in our troop deployments in the next six months?

Mr Ingram: No. It depends what you mean by significant. Define terms, I would say. If someone gets hung up on an extra 200, up or down, or 500, up or down, what does it mean? You are asking for the definition of timelines and timescales. I could have an interpretation of the word significant but you may have a different figure when you use the word, I do not know.

Q13 Mr Viggers: United Nations Security Council 1546 stipulates that the mandate of the coalition's forces "...shall be reviewed at the request of the Government of Iraq or 12 months from the date of this resolution", the resolution was 8 June 2004. Is 8 June 2005 regarded as a very significant date or do you accept it will just go past?

Mr Ingram: It must be a significant date because it is part of the UN mandate. That must be one of those dates which we all focus on. It is not in our gift to change that either willingly or vicariously just because we feel we want to do it or because we are determined. We have set the system, we are there as part of our understanding of UN resolutions, we are now working to a UN mandate and we will always focus our attention on UN determination and views in all this. We seek to bring that to mature conclusions.

Q14 Mr Viggers: The status of forces agreement, so far, under which we are within Iraq, do you regard it as being a topical issue at the moment and possibly needing amendment, as has been commented by one Iraqi commentator?

Mr Ingram: I am not familiar with the comments which have been made.

Q15 Mr Viggers: It was Ahmed Chalabi.

Mr Ingram: There is nothing that I know of to say that we have grave concerns here or whatever.

Major General Houghton: It was negotiated extensively in the run-up to the passing of sovereignty 28 January last year. Some of it was contained still in extant CPA orders and some within side letters to the United Nations mandate. It caused no concerns at the time and I am not aware of any specific concerns which have arisen in connection with this.

Q16 Mr Viggers: Has thought been given to the projection of the sovereign bases within Iraq on a long term basis or a relationship akin to that which the United States had in Germany after the war?

Mr Ingram: This was not part of our planning approach but, again, maybe the General has more information on that.

Major General Houghton: I can only speak from a specific UK perspective but there is no intention to have any long term bases strategy vis-à-vis Iraq. I cannot comment, because I simply do not know, what the nature of any long term plans are for the Americans in that respect.

Q17 Mr Hancock: I would like to deal with some issues relating to the navy presence out there. If I may, can I go back to what you said earlier about the duration of our stay there and the role of the current election outcome. Do you plan that they will be able to have a say about whether or not the coalition stay or would that be a decision for their successors who will be elected at the end of this year after they have agreed a constitution and then elected a parliament? Certainly, listening to Mr Bush, he would suggest the Americans do not see it as an option for the current elected assembly to make that decision on whether we stay or go. Are we planning to be there until at least after the next round of elections?

Mr Ingram: There is no difference in our language between the US and the UK. Obviously you are interpreting it in one particular way, we do not interpret it that way. We have said as a consistent message we put forward that this is a matter for the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people's views have been expressed in one sense through the ballot box; they have another process, you are right, to go through once the constitution is in place but there is no-one really arguing. We have been through this in terms of our first answer about how there are different languages being used because of different audiences in all this but the reality on the ground is one that they want us to stay, they see the need for us to stay, they are not ready yet to take on the enormity of the security task, although they are improving. Again, we will probably touch on all of that in this afternoon's session. I could not envisage a situation where there was a determination within the new assembly which was saying: "Coalition forces please get out" because that would then be articulated in other ways as well through the form of the UN and other means, that somehow we would change our mandate unilaterally, I just do not see that eventuality happening. Some may want to fault that language to try and make it look as if we are there in the long run. I am not saying you are saying that.

Q18 Mr Hancock: No, no, I am not.

Mr Ingram: You are not saying that. Others want people to believe that is the case, that we are there as an imposed force, as an occupying force, we are not, we are there under a UN mandate and will continue to operate under that UN mandate. We will work in concert with the wishes both of the Iraqi Government, as it forms, and also with the wishes of the Iraqi people.

Q19 Mr Viggers: In operational terms then, your two colleagues who are intimately responsible in that field and who are speaking with the same voice as the Americans, if the Americans are planning for at least a full year stay, is that what you are working to in operational terms?

Major General Houghton: Our view on this is for all of us to accept that we identify there is an absolute mutual benefit between ourselves and the elected Iraqi Government in our continued presence there for the foreseeable future which is defined not in the sense of time but in the sense of conditionality. The conditionality here is that in all respects the Iraqis are able themselves to assume responsibility for continuing to prosecute what will still be a relatively complex counter-insurgency operation. It is difficult to put a specific time on that. It is a conditions based approach. I hesitate to say in respect of months how many that would be. Between us, the Americans and the Iraqi Government there is a mutual understanding of the eventual determination of the Iraqis to assume this responsibility. If you like, it is captured in the stages of the overall campaign plan, which sees us at the moment in the situation of partnership but moves to one of Iraqi self-reliance.

Q20 Mr Hancock: If I could move on to the navy. Some Members of the Committee were fortunate enough to go on HMS Marlborough when they were in the area. Is it your view that we will continue to have a naval presence there as part of that task force looking after the maritime interests of Iraq?

Mr Ingram: The answer to that is yes, there are no plans to change that posture at all for the foreseeable future.

Q21 Mr Hancock: What are our plans about the training of the Iraqi coastal forces and giving them some assistance and getting the right equipment so they can not only protect their sea base assets but also be able to patrol up and down the Euphrates?

Major General Houghton: At the moment, the nature of the development of the Iraqi navy is relatively modest: five patrol crafts, five inflatable boats, effectively to do things in support of riverine security and that sort of thing. As the Minister has said, clearly there are a limited amount of resources which can be poured into the development of the Iraqi security architecture overall and those elements which are really more related to Iraq's external relations will probably still be let in some residual partner relationship with the international community facing external threats. One of the things that they could not conceivably resource at this stage is that of maritime protection, particularly their offshore oil installations. We envisage that the UK and other international partners will play an enduring role in what we term strategic overhaul option well after all the localised security issues are resolved.

Q22 Mr Hancock: Including escorting tankers in and out of that very confined space, protecting tankers coming into the area?

Major General Houghton: Protecting tankers coming in, yes.

Mr Ingram: You mean in terms of Umm Qasr?

Major General Houghton: To the offshore oil installations, yes.

Mr Ingram: Can I say it is planned that the Iraqi Navy will take on operational responsibility for the oil platform from July 2005. Just like the ground forces they are building a capability in this and as ever that will be tested on the basis of how good they are. Hopefully they get to that level of competency and then that is another task we do not need to perform. Those are the plans.

Q23 Mr Havard: Can I say, we visited it - some of us did - it is in a terrible state, and all the rest of it, but there was a US naval infantry - apparently they have such a thing naval infantry - stationed on the oil platforms themselves protecting them. We saw some of the small patrol boats going past to help to secure it. There were some what seemed to be private Iraqi security guards on it as well, there were four of them, I think, and the Americans said to us "We know where four Kalashnikovs are". You are saying that the Iraqis are going to take control of security of that installation from July?

Mr Ingram: The advice I have got is that the plans are for the Iraqi navy to assume that responsibility for the oil platform security as from.

Q24 Richard Ottaway: As from when?

Mr Ingram: As from July 2005. In terms of perhaps individual personnel, we can find out more about that and sometimes it is better not to say exactly what is on the platform in security terms because that just draws attention to levels of security. We have always got to be careful. The same applies to our own oil platforms and oil rigs in the North Sea. You do not spill out all of the data on how you secure those.

Q25 Mr Havard: You do not secure it with four Kalashnikovs.

Mr Ingram: I have to say they are well secured because that is absolutely critical.

Q26 Mr Havard: Absolutely.

Mr Ingram: There has to be a focus on it, and indeed in terms of economic terms they have to be secured but also in environmental terms they have to be secured.

Q27 Mr Hancock: Can I just take you back to the navy's role. There is the ongoing problem, presumably, with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their ship borne activities. Does that continue to cause us problems in that area? Do we have any plans to equip the Iraqi naval forces with anything bigger than what they have got now, going up to say a frigate of their own, which would allow them to protect the deep water access to their country?

Major General Houghton: We do not have any UK specific plans in terms of the development of the Iraqi navy to that level of capability.

Q28 Mr Hancock: It is the coalition.

Major General Houghton: I could not comment. I am not aware of any coalition but I could not comment on any potential bilateral US/Iraqi understanding on that.

Q29 Mr Hancock: The issue with the Iranians?

Major General Houghton: In terms of the navigable channel - the Shat al Arab - that is now in the hands of the Iraqis themselves who are effectively patrolling that. The UK no longer have any form of operational responsibility for that because it is a purely a training and support responsibility.

Q30 Mr Hancock: Are the Iranians still around in that sense?

Major General Houghton: They are but as far as I am aware they are being relatively disciplined in sticking to what we regard to be their side of the Shat al Arab as delineated by the international border.

Q31 Mr Roy: Can I ask about the operational cost of the UK contribution to Iraq. We know already that cost is £1.3 billion for the year 2003-04. We know the figures for the next financial year will be published. What I would like to find out is where you are in relation to the new financial cost. Can you give us an estimate?

Dr Hutton: Not looking forward, no.

Mr Ingram: We do not look forward. We wait until that information is captured and then we publish it. You said £1.3 billion, it is £1.311 billion, another £11 billion on top of that, just for accuracy. Clearly contingency funds have been laid aside, it is better to wait until the full outturn is there.

Q32 Mr Roy: There are no projections which have been made?

Dr Hutton: In the broadest terms the year coming will be broadly the same as the year that has just gone; it will not be the same as the year before that which was obviously the major combat phase.

Q33 Richard Ottaway: Minister, as you anticipated, we move on to the numbers and ability of the Iraqi security forces. I am sure you will agree that their success is absolutely critical to the whole game out there, and in my judgment they have still got a long way to go. If I could deal with the numbers first, what are the current numbers of the Iraqi security forces? There seems to be quite a discrepancy depending on who you listen to. What is the latest you have got?

Mr Ingram: The latest I have got is the latest announced to Parliament so there should be no discrepancy between what I am going to tell you now and what you have.

Q34 Richard Ottaway: You tell me what it is and I will tell you if there is a discrepancy.

Mr Ingram: The figures I have got are that there are over 130,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces.

Q35 Richard Ottaway: I have not got that figure.

Mr Ingram: That is including approximately 57,000 Iraqi police service, 15,000 Department of Border Enforcement, 10,000 army, 39,000 National Guard and 6,000 Intervention Force. I am advised, also, that there are around 74,000 in the Facilities Protection Service who again I am advised have a very basic level of training and they are the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior. Those are the ballpark figures in all this. The variations in figures given may be between those that are in as trained but not trained and equipped so the definition then becomes important, I have given you trained and equipped. Then the reality probably is because they are trained and equipped they may not all be ready to do things; it depends which part of the security force we are talking about, some clearly are better than others. Their capacity is improving all the time. The important test of this, of course, was the elections. One of the key indicators in this was - again we are getting good feedback - that the Iraqi people now have the confidence in the security presence, the police presence or whatever, on the ground from their own people because, again, people felt free to vote. There was a high threat level out there but they saw their own people on the streets so that ramps up the level of confidence which is there which must give confidence to those carrying out those duties. Once you have won the confidence of your own people then you have a better point of engagement. It must be a developing process. These figures we give are not figures which you would say would turn out and exercise maximum capability if tomorrow they wanted to do so, that would not be the real world in which we live, but it is an improving position all the time.

Q36 Richard Ottaway: Unsurprisingly that is consistent with what we saw when we were out there in December, a lot of enthusiasm. I will come back to their ability in a second. On the numbers point, do you have a breakdown of religion? How many Sunnis there are, for example?

Mr Ingram: I do not have and I do not know whether that is available at all. I do not know whether that has been collected. It is a valid point.

Q37 Richard Ottaway: It is quite relevant.

Mr Ingram: Who then collects that? I would suggest maybe that is something the Iraqis themselves should be doing rather than us. I can see the sensitivity if we start doing ethnic grouping.

Q38 Richard Ottaway: I do not disagree with that, I just wonder if you have the figure? Turning to their ability now. There is a report done by General Luck, which you will be well aware of, are you able to tell us what the nature of that report is?

Mr Ingram: It depends what you mean by the word "report". I am not having arguments over terminology here, hopefully unnecessarily. The study was taken to have a good look at what precisely was happening, a step back from it to see what is in place currently and then how do we envisage developments for the future. We had people with General Luck as part of that. We did visit MND (South East) and we were very impressed with the way in which we conducted our business down there. Remember, of course, it is more benign than the more hostile environment in the North. Therefore, though you can draw some benefits from that study, you cannot automatically say "That is the way it should apply in a more hostile environment" because it may not be able to connect quite in that way. What he has done then is our Prime Minister, our senior Chiefs of Staff and others, the Secretary of State and myself included, we have seen what the examination concluded. Of course that is for the US to determine. It goes back then to their President and their DoD, and Mr Rumsfield, and they have to consider if there is going to be a change of mission, if it is going to be structured in a different way, they have to determine what that means in resource terms, whether it is people or allocation of other resources, and that has not been determined yet. As a keen close ally of the United States clearly we would be part of the understanding of that process if it impacted on what we would expect to do. The report has been made but it is not a document which can then be furnished. It is a report in terms of analysis, a centre of all the information which is out there, and then an explanation of what is there and what is a way forward.

Q39 Richard Ottaway: What is in it?

Mr Ingram: I think we have got to wait and see just what comes out of it rather than what the analysis shows because it is what is determined then as the delivery and I do not think we should be judging the examination; we should be judging what the output from all of that is. It seems to me that is not any different from what we do all the time anyway. We do not play out our analysis as we are looking at what is happening, whether it is in Afghanistan, the Balkans or, in this case, Iraq. As we are evolving that approach, we say that is an early conclusion we have reached and that is how we are going to attend to the problem.

Q40 Richard Ottaway: You have not decided yet?

Mr Ingram: I have explained that it is a matter for the US and the DOD.

Major General Houghton: The key mission, as it were, of the Luck team that went out was to determine whether or not the Petraeus plan, a plan that underpins the generation of Iraq's security force capability, was a good one and was on track or were we missing some big trick, was there some silver bullet solution that hitherto had been missed. The only thing that we definitely do know is that the Luck report has said verbally that there is no silver bullet that is being missed. We would anticipate there are an awful lot of incremental things that could be done better in terms of implementation here and there, the specific application of advice and resources, and it is that sort of detail that is still being worked out in the brief. The headline is that no silver bullet exists to generate things more quickly or more appropriately.

Q41 Richard Ottaway: There was a report that focused on a ten man team structure in the Washington Post. I know we do not believe anything we read in the press but is that the sort of thing you would be looking at?

Dr Hutton: Part of the sensitivity here, without saying too much about the Luck review, is that we are right in the middle of the American start of the process that is being staffed up through the DOD to the President, and we were privileged to be part of this review, the MoD were involved, and we do not really want to compromise our position within that by saying too much about it before they even reach their formal position publicly, at which point of course we will fall in line with that.

Q42 Richard Ottaway: Would it be uniform if what you do up in the north would not be the same in the south once you have finalised the thing?

Mr Ingram: That is why I have said that clearly if recommendations are made which have an impact upon us then we will have a view to express about all that. We did point out there are two different territories we are looking at here, one relatively benign with a potential possibly not to be benign, one that is deemed as hostile and we are going to make that less hostile. It is to achieve that objective that the review was undertaken. We have to consider it in the light of all of this and that is an important consideration. On the other point, if you are asking what is in it, I hardly read the British press never mind the American press, I do not have time, and very wisely, I do not have to worry about the press unless they get it wrong, which they do a lot. I cannot speak for briefings that are going on or not, the important thing is the US Senate have not yet been told and it would be wrong for us to play out our understanding of this.

Q43 Richard Ottaway: This is an important Committee here.

Mr Ingram: I am not diminishing the role of this Committee at all ----

Q44 Richard Ottaway: I am joking.

Mr Ingram: I am just saying that this is a US review.

Q45 Richard Ottaway: Can I pick up on a phrase the General used when he spoke about Iraq and self-reliance a few minutes ago. This goes back to the time line: how long do you think it will be before the Iraqis are self-reliant?

Mr Ingram: That is how long is a piece of string, I suppose, is it not? This is part of what the Luck review would be seeking to find, as the General said, in terms of the Iraqi-isation of the security profile, how that can be ramped up and, of course, there are plans in place to move forward in all of that security sector in terms of phase two and then the three stages contained within that. We have gone through the first stage, which was the scoping stage, the next stage is to determine who is going to play in this territory, who is going to co-join with us in all of this, and that is likely to be better defined at the NATO Summit, which is a matter of weeks away, and then we will see who is making up that process forward. On that basis it is back to that time line approach. There are not specific dates when things must be achieved, although we have to try to hit those high targets at all times and we must push on with that.

Q46 Richard Ottaway: I agree with that. Would you agree that we cannot withdraw coalition troops, the British/American troops, whatever structure we have later on, until there is Iraqi self-reliance?

Mr Ingram: That goes back to an earlier answer. If the desire is for us not to be there then we will not be there. The view is that the desire will be for us to be there and we have always said that we will be there until the job is done if that is what the requirement is. How we define that the job is done will be a progressive view to be taken.

Q47 Richard Ottaway: I think you are merging two answers now. Would you go if the Iraqis asked you to stay?

Mr Ingram: If we are going into an election period there are some parties who have said if they win they will withdraw, but that is not the view of this Government and I do not believe it is the consensus view within the British Parliament. I think there is a determination, as there always is, to finish the task. To finish the task is set against a number of parameters. We can define what we believe finishing the task is but the Iraqis may have a different view on all of that and we would have to take cognisance of what their view is as well.

Q48 Richard Ottaway: When we were out there we looked at an infrastructure that had been blasted to hell, frankly, and it was the same with ships, the dockyards, oil, electricity. It is only through the involvement of the private sector that that is ever going to be really put straight. I do not think any government could go in and rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq. No investor is going to go into Iraq and invest money unless he knows the situation is stable and, more important, is going to stay stable. The private investors - we, having started this, have got to finish it - have got to be sure that it is going to stay stable. This goes back to where we started my line of questioning about the ability of the Iraq security forces. In my judgment, it is still some time off and, therefore, I am worried that they are being hustled into saying "We are ready" when maybe they are not going to be.

Mr Ingram: I know what you are saying because there may be noises elsewhere saying that this is cut and run time for the US and the UK, but that is not the flavour. Clearly the refocusing of what can be done and what can be done best to increase the capacity of the Iraqi security forces and of the other parts of the Iraqi infrastructure, the government infrastructure and so on, is important. We have got to push on, aggressively is the best word. We have got to be forcing the pace, we cannot allow it to atrophy and just stand still because that does not serve anyone well. I take the point you are saying about the private sector and private investors and the same culture applies to the United Nations and to NGOs. They want to see the humanitarian space there so they can move in and then deliver what they are good at doing, therefore we have got to try to create that humanitarian space as best and as quickly as we can. There are tremendous rewards in the reconstitution and reconstruction of Iraq. It is potentially a very wealthy country and, therefore, there are big rewards for those who invest. We have got to create the conditions for that to happen. There is no cut and run philosophy, there is no pressure on to say "You must do this otherwise we are pulling out", it is all about working in partnership with the emerging new government. They are articulating this anyway. To go back to the earlier answers I gave about some of the comments which have been made about it is time for the coalition forces to leave, that is an indication that they want to take the initiative for this on their own account but they know in real terms that they need us there as we build that capacity of the Iraqi security forces and the other bits of infrastructure because it will not just be security forces that will deliver this, it is everything else that gives that atmosphere of normalcy, if that can be best achieved in terms of civil society as well.

Q49 Richard Ottaway: Until you get that normalcy, presumably your planning is open-ended and the Generals and Admirals and Air Force Marshals have all got to plan on the assumption that this may not end in a year's time?

Mr Ingram: We always have to have contingent planning for that which we want and that which may not be what we want. We have to keep a number of balls in the air on all this.

Richard Ottaway: Thank you very much.

Q50 Mr Viggers: The review by General Luck sounds important and when we asked whether we could have a copy of the report made available to us, we were told that he had not prepared a report, he had prepared a PowerPoint presentation. Can you comment on my suspicion that it could just be that he prepared a PowerPoint presentation rather than a report because a report would have to be made available through freedom of information?

Mr Ingram: I do not know. I do not have a sophisticated knowledge of the US system, whether this is an attempt to deny information. It seems to me with the amount of leakage that goes on within the Ministry of Defence, both here and in the States, FOI may have some attraction, but it happens anyway. I think it has been done in a realistic way. Do not be too prescriptive, there is no silver bullet here, and that is what the General said. This is not "Here is an analysis, here is how we have determined the route out of this and, therefore, that must happen", it is a range of options which will be there. It is flavour as much as what can be delivered and to look at the best way forward. This is an evolving process, a review that just points away in certain directions. It is then down to the US Administration, and if it impacts on us down to us as well, and other coalition partners, and if there is a change in posture, a change in emphasis. that has to be delivered on the basis of what resources are allocated to it. It may mean more resources, it may not just be in people terms, it may be in money terms or other types of resources that will need to be put in alongside that, and all of that is still to be determined.

Major General Houghton: I made the point a couple of sessions ago that it was not a formally written report, it was a PowerPoint presentation but a report might subsequently be written from it. I do not detect anything sinister in there. I might have sounded a bit glib at the time but it is a cultural fact that the principal mechanism by which the American military exchange information is through PowerPoint presentations, it is not through writing papers and reports, that is just the way they do business. It does not really come as a great surprise to me.

Q51 Chairman: We are going to the States in a few weeks, I was going to say maybe we will have more luck there, but maybe they will show us the PowerPoint presentation.

Mr Ingram: I think it may be more mature by the time you get there as well, there may be clarity of thinking on the way forward. Remember there is a timescale in this and there is the NATO Summit as well, so thinking will begin to impact upon all of that.

Q52 Mr Havard: Part of the reason why I asked some questions in previous sessions was this idea of these ten men teams, this idea of embedding US forces in with formed units of Iraqi forces to bolster them up or mentor them or guide them and so on, and whether that was going to be a consistent coalition idea and, therefore, we might see British troops in the same sort of activity. That is the thing that has raised the question as to whether or not the Brits are going to change their doctrine, their practice and ways of doing that, albeit for a special reason, in a special place for a particular period, whatever the qualifications. I think that is what we really want to know, what effect is the Luck Commission having in terms of British tactics and deployment?

Mr Ingram: There is no pressure for change at present. I would anticipate there will be no change for the future in the way in which you have defined because that is not consistent with the way in which we would operate in terms of our experience, whether it is in Northern Ireland or elsewhere. We have a different way of achieving our objectives. You are right in terms of that is one strand of US thinking but that is something that they have to consider if that is what they want to do in a particular area. They could suggest we may want to do it but I think you know it is not something that we would respond to in a positive way because of the nature of our experience. Everyone points to our success in any event where we deliver on our missions, and if we have a successful route then let us continue doing that.

Q53 Mr Havard: I certainly share the reservations that you have just expressed about the ways of doing that might not be the best way to change that and perhaps we have got a practice that works for us and we ought to stick to it.

Major General Houghton: I would say it is not altogether incompatible with some things that we have done historically. Quite often we have used small amounts of UK military capability to embed with indigenous forces which was one of the ways in which we assisted in the policing of an empire, it was the way in which operations were conducted in Oman at certain times.

Mr Ingram: I am talking about recent times, not going back 300 years.

Major General Houghton: It is something that we would treat on its merits. It is really the techniques of mentoring where we would potentially wish to adopt our own ways of doing things and just not a broad-brush acceptance that that is the best way forward.

Q54 Mr Havard: I think you begin to understand why we will be interested to see what comes out of the Luck report and any recommendations about how the Americans might behave. Personally, I am going back to what General Jackson keeps saying to us, that we fight with them not as them, and I think that is a fairly interesting maxim that we need to bear in mind when that report comes out.

Mr Ingram: It is not a question so I am not responding to it.

Q55 Chairman: We have asked the same question six times in the last two weeks. The embedding of British forces in Oman were an entire officer class called loan service personnel and were spoken of rather disparagingly, which leads me to a question. Please do not say it is not your responsibility, and if it is not perhaps you can pass it on to somebody else. There is a large number of former British troops in Iraq who are very dangerously exposed and they are part of very reputable British companies, private security companies. The Foreign Office had a Green Paper a few years ago on private military companies, mercenaries, private security. Most people confuse these and look disparagingly at what are often absolutely reputable companies doing a very dangerous job, well paid but doing a very dangerous job. I have proposed through a Green Paper that these companies be regulated. Yesterday I spoke to the chairman and chief executive of the Security Industry Authority, which is responsible for licensing and regulating domestic British companies who are security companies. When I put to them, not that I was in a position to offer it, whether they would be opposed if they were asked to license British companies who were providing security services abroad, in no way were they hostile, quite the reverse. What I am proposing, Minister, is that perhaps you talk to your colleagues in the Foreign Office, in DFID, in the Home Office, because the Home Office set up the Security Industry Authority, to see whether it is a runner, because I know a number of the companies who are deployed there are absolutely in favour of having some form of regulation or licensing. It will allow the British to say "Our hands are clean in this. The companies who are operating in Iraq, or anywhere else abroad, are not private militias, private armies, mercenaries, running around like some 14^th Century condotiere but actually doing a reasonably good job". I ask you if you would set about contacting those departments that do have an interest, and I think the Foreign Office take the lead, and get in touch with the Security Industry Authority. I think it is a win-win situation for us. Although you could not license the individual operatives, because many of them are foreign and many of them are British soldiers living abroad and outside the jurisdiction of the legislation, you could regulate the companies and empower the companies to make sure that their personnel met acceptable British standards. I really think if this can be pulled off it is something that might be very helpful. I am not asking you to respond, Minister.

Mr Ingram: I have not examined it in detail because it is not part of my core responsibilities or, indeed, the MoD's responsibilities. Wherever we are we have always got to look for appropriate ways of doing things and whether this is reflected as a recommendation from this inquiry or whether it is picked up from the transcript of this session, I will make sure people are aware of your concerns.

Q56 Chairman: Lastly, quite a number of these guys who are out there are recently departed British soldiers who find the risks to be worth the greatly increased salaries above what the MoD is able to pay. In a way, we may not have a formal responsibility for them but I think UK Limited's reputation would increase quite considerably if we were seen to be the only country in the world, other than South Africa, which has any real control over companies operating abroad in this sort of quasi-military, quasi-policing, guarding, VIP protection area.

Mr Ingram: I take note of your concerns, Chairman.

Chairman: If you would, Minister.

Q57 Mr Cran: You will be relieved to hear that I am not going to ask you about the private security industry, which is a bee in our Chairman's bonnet, but I do want to go back to what you were saying to Richard Ottaway, who asked a number of the questions I was going to ask but he did it so much better than I ever could. In asking these two questions which I have got I am very aware of what you said at the beginning, that we are dealing with a sovereign government and that sovereign government has to take its decisions in its way. I do not think that means we should absolve ourselves from some form of action to help them. It is a good way to start with the Secretary of State on 24 November last year when he said in relation to the Fallujah Operation to this Committee, that the Iraqis "will have complete authority and, indeed, responsibility for those operations". When we went out to Iraq we had quite a lot of official briefings but at this particular one it was made very clear to us and, indeed, the words that were used was that the administrative architecture simply did not exist for the Iraqi Government to exercise any political control over their Armed Forces whatsoever. Is this a scenario that you recognise? If you do not recognise it, why were we being briefed that was the reality?

Mr Ingram: You are right that we cannot be absolved from carrying on an attendant responsibility, we are there and we have helped to create the new Iraq and, therefore, we have a continuing interest whether we are in country or outside the country, and of course part of the NATO training mission is about trying to achieve a better depth of competencies at that senior level of capability within the Iraqi Armed Forces. What was in place last November will have been improved upon now because it is incremental, although it may be small steps, and the plan is to make it even stronger, even more robust, giving them more confidence to do the things that they should be doing on their own account, probably working alongside coalition forces as well. The principle that was enunciated by the Secretary of State would be right and the reality will improve over time. That is what we are seeking to do. It is not a perfect structure that is there, it is not a robust structure, it is not replete with large numbers of confident commanders prepared to take on decision making, and that is not unsurprising, we find that anyway in terms of the Armed Forces of the former Soviet satellite states and we are building their confidence and they have moved on incredibly fast in all of this because of a willingness to achieve those objectives and so on. The point I am making is that what was there was a principle and that was the mechanism by which we were operating in Fallujah and the actual delivery of that will improve over time.

Q58 Mr Cran: Is it your view that there is a political will on behalf of the Iraqi Government, the Iraqi Minister of Defence, our opposite number, in that area that political control should be exercised over Armed Forces?

Mr Ingram: Yes.

Q59 Mr Cran: Are they happy to?

Mr Ingram: It is some time since I have been in Iraq. The Secretary of State has covered the territory over the last year but I visited a number of times before that and I hope to visit again at some point. I appreciate when you do the visits, as I do, that you pick up a lot of ground truth and a lot of reality of what is happening which does not always match up to the briefing one gets. That is good, that is the purpose of the visit, to get that ground truth and to hear first hand. Of course, any visiting Iraqi ministers coming through, if he is on the military side or the security side, I have tended to see them and I have had a number of meetings of that nature and I have no question at all that they understand the requirements here. I must say I have got confidence in the way in which they understand the issue, the way in which they articulate it, the way in which they want to move it forward. I make this point again: they are very proud people, no matter which part of the country they come from. You will have met them and they have a right to be proud but it is confidence that has to be instilled and then gaining that confidence within themselves but also those over whom they have got command. That is not a silver bullet, it is not something that you can lift off the shelf and it is immediately inculcated into their minds and off they go and do it, we have to build that capacity, and Iraq is no different from Afghanistan, the Balkans or anywhere else where we have found ourselves working in the security sector before.

Q60 Chairman: Please do not coach the Ministry of Defence there on how to appear before, no doubt, the Defence Committee in Iraq. I would be very upset.

Mr Ingram: You think we would train them better.

Q61 Chairman: I would be very upset if you coach them, I really would.

Mr Ingram: I do not know what that means but I will take it both ways.

Chairman: Send them over to us and we will talk to them.

Q62 Mr Cran: We do hope that the first Defence Committee does not have a chairman who keeps interrupting the questioner. Maybe we can live in hope. Just to complete, before I am interrupted again, you have given the background to the whole thing, which I personally accept, but I want to be clear in my mind in the here and now - now, not some time in the future - what are the British Armed Forces and so on doing to help the Iraqis develop what we all want them to have, which is a professional army that can do all the things that you answered Richard Ottaway on.

Major General Houghton: The position here is what we are attempting to do over and above the training at the unit level, and it harks specifically back to the question that you put in the context of Fallujah last year, is giving advice in the creation of what we would call operational C2 architecture. The specifics of Fallujah last year, when a decision was made to prosecute that particular method of operation, was undoubtedly a political one. The organisation of bodies existed at the highest level within the multinational forces and within the Iraqi Government. The Ministerial Committee on National Security Transactions existed and it was at that level and Mr Allawi making the decision to prosecute the Fallujah Operation as it happened, but then what we are saying is that the absolute conduct of the operation, the orders of process, flowed down the multinational force chain of command, it did not flow down the Iraqi Armed Forces' chain of command because it was not sufficiently developed and robust. So there was political accountability at the highest level but the actual implementation of that political decision by and large flowed down a multinational force chain of command which was then wedded in at the local level with Iraqi security forces at a provincial level. What we need to ensure, and in many respects more important than the simple training and equipment of numbers, is to deliver to the Iraqis their own operational C2 capability. We have done a good deal of advice on this already. We have an organisation within our own Permanent Joint Headquarters called the Joint Taskforce Headquarters which has an operational purpose as well, and when it is not engaged in an operation it can go and give training in these very things. It has already been out a couple of times and it is due to go out again to try to instil, as I say, from the top to the bottom of the Iraqi Armed Forces a security architecture, proper operational command and control organisation.

Q63 Mr Cran: So there is a very definite contribution.

Dr Hutton: I will say a little bit about what we can do to assist security. Can I just get back to your point you made earlier about the democratic control of the Iraqi Armed Forces. My impression, having met senior people in the Iraqi MoD, is that they are very well seized of the need for democratic control of the Armed Forces, partly because it was not very long ago that they were on the receiving end of an MoD that was not democratically controlled. I think that culture is becoming inculcated in the Iraqi MoD. We have our own UK MoD advisers very close to that process in Baghdad. On the specifics of what the UK are doing to assist in the building of the Iraqi security forces, in the Iraqi police service you are aware we have a number of advisers, we have basic level training in Basra, Jordan, and we have deployed UK police officers to assist with that and supporting contractors. Perhaps most importantly from the MoD perspective is the assistance that we give to the Iraqi National Guard which you will also be aware is merging with the Iraqi Army. That is focused on the six ING battalions in MND(SE). Those units are paired with our units which mentor and monitor their progress. The main focus is on mentoring at division and brigade level because, as General Houghton said, it is building those structures that are important now. It is all very well to have lots of people trained to a basic level to be the foot soldiers but they need the leadership and the command and control and they also need the enabling functions, the logistics and supply element, otherwise they do not perform as coherent formations. No doubt some of those lessons about mentoring will play back into Luck as he goes to the next stage because he did go to MND(SE) and looked at what we were doing there.

Q64 Mr Cran: The question is the difference between the now and whenever the Luck recommendations kick in. You will agree, therefore, with the US State Department in its report to Congress which said Iraqi security forces will "require national, operational and tactical level capabilities to reconstitute and regenerate forces that suffer casualties, injuries, or absentees". It also admits that logistic capabilities are lacking. You all recognise this. Again, are we helping?

Mr Ingram: I think that was part of the explanation that was given.

Q65 Mr Havard: Can I follow up what you were saying about command and control. I would like to ask you a bit more about that later on when we get on to counter-insurgency. As far as capabilities in Iraq are concerned, the other bit of the jigsaw that is missing is their Intel, is it not, their intelligence process. This is quite problematic both in terms of police and military. The police do not have basic intelligence, forensic and things to do normal crime type policing, but there is also the question of military intelligence. It is also extremely sensitive because you also need Jones the spy in a country like this that has a different tradition in terms of its intelligence services. Perhaps you can say something about how we are helping with the intelligence process both policing and military and otherwise, because that is the other bit they need in command and control, to have the capability to do what James was saying might need to be done, which is to replace some of the capabilities that they are still borrowing from us, if you like.

Major General Houghton: I would not pretend that we are a long way down the track of developing a comprehensive internal Iraqi national intelligence gathering apparatus that it has been clearly recognised as one of the key factors that they will need in order to be able to continue to prosecute a counter-insurgency campaign. We are providing a number of advisers as to the sorts of techniques they need to develop. You are quite right to identify Evans the spy, as it were, but Humit - human intelligence - gathered on organisations is one of the key requirements for intelligence-led operations which are precision based. A significant amount of work and advice is being launched at this moment to attempt to give them some of those skills as much on procedures and assessments and those sorts of things. Some of the original techniques are not lost on them from previous regimes and organisations, they understand the requirement.

Mr Havard: Only too well in some cases.

Q66 Mr Cran: Chairman, I just have one question to ask. I do not know which one of you it was who mentioned the Iraqi National Guard but we have been told that this is going to merge with the army, is that still the case?

Dr Hutton: That is still the case.

Q67 Mr Cran: Has it taken place? When is it going to take place?

Dr Hutton: I do not think it has taken place just yet but it is imminent. It was announced by Prime Minister Allawi in January.

Mr Cran: Thank you, that is all.

Q68 Mr Hancock: If I could just follow on from James' last question. I could not see the sense of allowing so many armed groups to bring themselves back into being and to consolidate the position. Where you have as many as maybe half a dozen uniformed and non-uniformed security forces there is always a problem, is there not, associated with the fact you might have the army under political control but who controls the others and where is the political accountability? Does that not in itself allow power to be concentrated maybe in the hands of one or two very powerful ministers then or individuals who actually get to the top of that? I am interested to know whether there was any thinking along the lines of what this country needed more than anything was a regular army supported by a proper police force and nothing else.

Mr Ingram: That must be the eventual desired position, but Iraq, as it currently stands, is facing a number of pressure points around border security and so on, riverine security. That is the logic of it, because that is what applies in normal developed societies, that type of structure, but that is not the stage we are at at present and, to make the point again, it is evolving. There is no indication that private armies are developing under the control of one powerful minister to be used in the way in which Saddam Hussein would have used his security forces. I think there is enough alertness around within the Iraqi system, never mind what we would be conscious of as a coalition force or even from the UK perspective, to allow that to happen. I think they are more than conscious of all of that in terms of private armies developing.

Q69 Mr Hancock: There is a controversy, is there not, about what happened in the initial stages with the Americans saying "We are going to disband the army completely and start again" and people saying "Maybe we should not have done that, we should have allowed a lot of it to have stayed in the same command structures and we would have had a much more stable military presence", and then you have got my point of view which says you should not have allowed this because I think it is harder to take power away from people when you have allowed these militias to be created, or it is harder than we think it is. Certainly that is what has happened in Eastern Europe, is it not, where it has been very difficult to disband these units which were there prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Major General Houghton: I think it is fair to say that in the immediate aftermath of the conflict phase judgments were reached that it was probably a mistake to have a disbandment of the whole Iraqi Armed Forces root and branch, as it were, but there was a tendency then for a local bottom-up initiative to dictate the way in which Iraqi security forces were first drawn up. You will recall there was a figure in the ICDC that then translated into the ING and the ING is now being incorporated more generally into the army. What we have seen slightly over time, but against the background where the interim government is not allowed to make destiny issues about the future size and shape of Armed Forces and security force architecture, is there has only gradually been the establishment of the setting up of a security strategy where top-down policy driven from Baghdad is meeting with a bottom-up initiative which was brought about in the immediate aftermath of the conflict phase in response to local circumstances. There has been some pragmatic use of militias and then the desire to sweep these militias up within a more strategically determined security force architecture. This is still playing out. I think that the ultimate security force architecture will not be determined until well into a fully elected Iraqi government post its next transitional phase.

Q70 Mr Hancock: Can I take you back to what you said earlier, Minister, about we were operating under a UN mandate. I am interested to know what you think the current role of the UN is, where you think they will go during the course of this year and what role you think you play in the reporting of what is actually happening on the ground there through the responsibilities you have under the UN mandate.

Mr Ingram: Are you asking am I satisfied that there is a sufficiency of UN buy-in on this? Probably the answer to that is no. A lot of our effort, and it is the FCO who lead on this, it is not an MoD lead, is to encourage all of that. Again, part of the equation is that you then have to have a relatively stable environment to encourage them in because they were there and then, as we know, they tragically lost some people, some of their senior personnel. Therefore, there is a reluctance to engage too early in too great a number because they may become a target as well because there is that insurgency out there that would see that development taking place and say that is going to be the next target. There has to be every effort made to try to create a calmer environment that encourages the UN, encourages them in and the NGOs as well, which then becomes crucial to a raft of reconstruction effort because the allocation of resources is there in money terms but the delivery mechanisms are not yet in country because of that lack of human resource to take it forward. That must be part of the development stage in all of this, the UN increasingly becoming involved and that is what the wish is. It is not a case of us holding them off, in fact it is the very opposite, it is about trying to encourage them in.

Q71 Mr Hancock: I understand that. Can you tell us just how you respond to the responsibilities of that mandate back to the UN? Do our commanders have to report through a process which allows the Secretary-General to judge whether or not the mandate is being upheld in the way it was agreed?

Dr Hutton: I am not familiar with any such process whereby the UK commanders ----

Q72 Mr Hancock: There is no mechanism that allows that. I am interested to know what value the UN mandate is if the UN has no exercising control over whether it is being exercised properly, there are parameters to it or what.

Dr Hutton: There will be close liaison with Mr Karzai in Baghdad. On the ground there will be discussions between MNFI and the UN. In that sense, of course, there is close liaison. The UN will know precisely what is going on on the ground through that and through various other mechanisms, not least reporting back through the Security Council. The other point that is worth making here is that the UN SR1546 places a mandate on the UN itself to assist with the political process and also with the reconstruction effort.

Q73 Mr Hancock: Then if I could ask you to turn to the EU's role in Iraq and how we fit in with that role, both in the military and the political sense.

Major General Houghton: The EU at the moment is very tentatively exploring what it could do, but my understanding is that it would be more on the non-military line of operation where it would attempt to have its effect.

Q74 Mr Hancock: Just economically or police equivalents?

Major General Houghton: Economically at least. Governance across the whole piece of the Iraqi ministries.

Q75 Mr Hancock: Would you be optimistic, bearing in mind our experiences of the EU picking up police responsibilities, or their reluctance to do so elsewhere, that there will be an enthusiasm in the EU to take that role on in a real sense rather than a political sense?

Mr Ingram: Maybe a politician should answer that. Is the EU perfect? No, it is not. Can it do better? Yes, it can. Are we seeking to achieve that? Yes, we are and will continue to do so because we have an EU focus and the EU has the capacity to deliver substantial resources and weight of effect if they so determine and it would be useful if they did so. That is part of the discussion we are in with our EU partners as well as our NATO partners.

Q76 Mr Hancock: But it is highly unlikely that countries that are withdrawing fighting soldiers from Iraq actually would be eager to replace them with police officers, is it not?

Mr Ingram: Not necessarily. Some will say that is what they are best able to deliver on. The very nature of some of the forces which are around are better placed in developing paramilitary style policing/army capabilities. They will judge that is how they can best make their contribution. It is horses for courses. If there are nations which think they can deliver a powerful effect in a particular way then that is to be encouraged. All we want is people to be engaged in the process, it does not matter at what level they are engaged as long as they are engaged in the process, and increasingly that is becoming the case. There is a NATO Summit but other discussions are going on bilaterally and multilaterally to achieve a cohesion of missions in all of this. It is not a perfect structure in Iraq or anywhere else where we have a presence.

Q77 Mr Havard: If I can turn to the question of insurgency and counter-insurgency. There has been a deal of criticism, particularly of the United States, in terms of them not being prepared effectively for a long-term counter-insurgency activity in Iraq. Their idea was that it was going to be a rapid effect and there were numbers bandied about that they would drop their forces back to 30,000 and so on, so it was not seen to be a security effort in that sense. In what way were we looking at this? Were the UK part of the coalition - we cannot speak for the Americans but we can speak for ourselves - prepared for that eventuality both in terms of manpower, training and equipment and so on? The other question that comes from that is whatever you say in terms of where we were, from our experience in the last couple of years have we had to change our tactics and processes as a consequence of encountering a particular form of counter-insurgency which we see in Iraq which may be a different experience from elsewhere?

Mr Ingram: I think the best answer is that no matter what you plan for and see if it could happen, you almost always tend to be surprised at the intensity and the focus and the direction and ability and intelligence that they bring to all of this. Then we have to quickly adapt and learn. Even with all of our experience in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan and the Balkans, this is a different manifestation in the sense that you have suicide bombers, you have people who are prepared to give their lives, and that is unusual from our experience because terrorists do not want to give their lives, they take life. This is a new development which we are having to increasingly address in all of this. Do we have a good handle on it now? The General can probably give you a better example of this but my feel for this would be yes. If the demand seeks something to deal with the problem, are our troops equipped to do so? The answer is yes, we have the urgent operational requirements. If something new emerges that we had not thought about then we quickly have to marshal our resources to deal with that. There is nothing new in this, that is the way it always will be. In the meanwhile, we are trying to get on top of that problem, having that outreach into the communities from which those people are drawn and working away in that territory to try and create a different political climate so that those communities then turn against that particular problem themselves because that is part of any solution, the community not wanting the terrorists, and in this case insurgency, within their ranks. That goes back to an earlier question when you asked about having human intelligence. People have to give you that information that in that house they are storing it. We have been doing that with some success and, again, I guess that will increasingly improve over time and it may well be the conduit for that will be the Iraqi forces themselves.

Major General Houghton: I agree absolutely. The specifics of any insurgency always have the ability to surprise you and the Minister used the example of suicide bombers. I think there is a complexity in this insurgency, if only seen within the context of the Sunni element of that insurgency in its various component parts, some of which is terrorism that is imported and to a certain extent manipulated from outside with a wholly atavistic and nihilistic type desire and agenda, that element which is potentially politically biddable through outreach to the Sunnis, the former regime elements, and those perhaps whose motivation to support the insurgency is no greater or less than the desire to see foreign troops out of the country. I still think necessarily that there are some enduring principles in relation to counter-insurgency which are familiar ones, and that is that there is not a straightforward militarily attrition-based approach to defeating it, it is the treatment of the symptoms of it, whether or not they are based on political aspiration, on the economy or a desire for a better life and those sorts of things. I think that is well recognised and that is why we attempt to have an approach which is multi-faceted and has lines of operation with the military only supporting those which are to do with politics, good governance, economic reform and those sorts of things.

Q78 Mr Havard: That is interesting because you anticipate my next question really. At one level almost the indictment that is made is that the coalition's counter-insurgency strategy is concentrated on the military side of the activities and has not perhaps done some of the things that you have just alluded to which might have been more successful in the longer term in terms of political and economic initiatives. There is a list of the use of things like local amnesties, negotiating surrender to combatants, getting local councils elected underneath governorships and so on, reconstruction activities, payments to displaced people, the whole question of compensation for damages. There is a whole series of these sorts of individual elements that make up part of this broader strategy. The indictment, if you like, that some people make is that has been neglected and maybe that should not take prominence over some of the military activity in order to achieve the end stage longer term objective.

Mr Ingram: I recognise the criticism that has been neglected but then those who make that criticism tend not to be those who then have to deliver those particular missions.

Q79 Mr Havard: All the best players are often in the stand.

Mr Ingram: Exactly. Therefore, we have got to be in the real world in understanding this. All those measures and all those triggers can be pulled but you then need a point of contact, a subtlety of approach, you need to be trusted and you need to have the confidence of the people. Clearly the way in which we perform, again, fortunately because it is a calmer environment we can do the hearts and minds activity and we have got a range of initiatives which we then deploy. It never ceases to amaze me how the British troops very quickly get out of their protective gear and into soft hat and that soft interface knowing, of course, if the threat is real they have got to return to it. Their instinct is to reach out, it is not to put a barrier up, even to the extent of learning Iraqi words and the Iraqi language so they can communicate. These are all simple solutions but you then need to be confident that you are not going to be shot at or bombed as you do that, you do not put yourself at risk, although we do take elements of risk in all of this, and that is a testament to the high quality of the troops that we have and the way in which they have developed their skills over the years. I recognise that list. I used the phrase earlier about humanitarian space, about the need for those who deliver into those environments to want humanitarian space because that is a measure of success and those who are delivering the humanitarian aid and building that normal society do not like to do it at the point of a bayonet, they cannot do that. You are not able to win people if it is "We are here to give you a bowl of rice and you had better eat it otherwise we will have trouble". You do not deliver humanitarian aid in that way, it has got to be done in a much more subtle way and it has got to be distant and remote from any military presence. If there is any need for military action to resolve the issue, that should be sitting round the corner to be able to deal with that. Whether that is best delivered by coalition forces or by Iraqi forces, again it seems to me it is better delivered by Iraqi forces. I made this point about some of the indicators of success coming out of the Iraqi elections and the way in which we are picking up a good vibe from the Iraqi people saying, "Those were our people on the street looking after us, helping us to get to the polling stations". Those are the indicators of change which we are increasingly seeing but, meanwhile, we still have the problem with insurgency.

Q80 Mr Havard: It is true, is it not, that in terms of military deployment, particularly thinking of infantry soldiers in this regard, we send people out of the British area, we send them up to Camp Dogwood into a different area? We spoke to some of the soldiers when we were out in Iraq before they came home and what was quite interesting, and we have seen from other people, is the change in tactics because there was some adaptation of tactics to deal with explosive devices in cars and suicide bombers and so on. It took a while for the Brits perhaps to make a change, a week or so, but they did come up with different ways, novel ways, original ways, of dealing with it. There must be lessons that they can learn from the military side of it. The other disappointment, and we have made this point on a number of occasions but I will make it again, is that what we saw was one good example of perhaps all the political and economic initiatives that could have been made, namely the water and sewerage supply in Basra, not coming forward as fast as had been promised because the money had been diverted off to the security sector before. That seemed to suggest that somebody thought these two things were mutually exclusive, which clearly they are not. There must be lessons like this that can be brought forward and there are particular examples of good practice but they have not got an understanding somewhere along the line of actually doing the second bit which is avoiding a military confrontation by doing a political and economic activity.

Mr Ingram: I am not so sure about the unwillingness for a lack of delivery of some of those key infrastructure elements in terms of water and energy.

Q81 Mr Havard: Let me just say this. What we saw was British troops forced back into a position again where they were doing somebody else's job with different resources or no resources, and so on, because they could not get on and do the things they wanted to do because they were substituting for something else. That is the sort of blowback we have in terms of what the military can do because the other parts of the jigsaw are not coming together.

Mr Ingram: That comes back to creating an environment where part of the jigsaw can then be put in place. The financial resources are available for so much more but the delivery mechanisms are still to be developed.

Q82 Mr Havard: Frankly, to me, they were dysfunctional.

Mr Ingram: I do not think they are dysfunctional. They are maybe not functioning in the way in which we would like but that does not make them dysfunctional and I do not think they are necessarily in conflict. It is creating the conditions so that you can move to the next point of delivery and meanwhile trying to create the conditions which encourages that to happen. It is much more subtle than just some linear equation. This is not just bang, do this and the next bit follows.

Q83 Mr Havard: Absolutely, I accept that, and that is why the counter-insurgency activity, as we have seen with our own borders in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, is the various bits that are working together, not just the military response. As far as Fallujah is concerned, and there was some reference to it earlier, on the one end of the continuum people are saying this was the wrong thing to do there, effectively it could even be described as a war crime because of the nature of the activity that went on there, civilians were killed, two-thirds of the infrastructure was destroyed. That is at one end of the argument. What I want to find is answers to some of the questions we asked earlier about how these sorts of processes go forward. I presume that you would say some people would ask for an independent investigation but that is not necessarily required, but at the same time an evaluation of what went on is required. Is there any particular evaluation that has been made about that?

Mr Ingram: As to the efficacy and the return from that initiative?

Q84 Mr Havard: An indication of how you might deal with counter-insurgency.

Mr Ingram: I am not sure I understand the question because I was reading it in terms of was Fallujah a success or not on the basis of the spectrum of comment that is out there.

Q85 Mr Havard: In some regards maybe, in some not.

Mr Ingram: There is no question at all that there was a very clear need to deal with a major problem in Fallujah. If that had not been dealt with then it may have become a bigger problem and that then becomes a matter of judgment as to how best that is dealt with. In terms of what you were saying about civilians being killed, remember all Iraqis are civilians, we categorise all of them as civilians, we do not put them into different camps. Clearly there were people who where prepared to stand and fight in Fallujah against the coalition force that was going in. Did that then create the right condition to move forward? I think the fact that we had successful elections means the answer to that would probably be yes. There are always going to be people who will analyse it differently because they do not want to recognise success because there are those who are trying to create a climate that says this is a failure, that we have not succeeded, that we should not have been there in the first place, and the fact we are there means that now they have got to talk up every incident as being a disaster and ignore all the other points of progress, of which there are a substantial amount. On any spectrum of analysis we are making good progress. There are good measures of success. I do not know who the independent assessor of all this would be but we have an international body that has that responsibility and that is the UN and this is a UN mandate and there is a determination of will that remains within the UN. I do not know who else would sit in judgment if not the UN.

Q86 Mr Havard: Perhaps I could just ask the question specifically. You made the point earlier on about command and control targeting policy. If the Iraqis decide to do this and we are involved, we keep saying it is really the Iraqis who should be driving it, the Iraqis are involved in making decisions about what should be done assessing priorities, and you said earlier on about the C2 architecture - the phrase that you used - command and control, decision making, proportionality, targeting and so on, and then the orders process that goes underneath that, but there is no mechanism by which they can do that, they rely on the coalition process to do that. That is one lesson that we see from the activities there. Are there any others that came from a particular activity which in part do what you have described, Minister, but also have the effect of dispersing insurgents into other areas? If I was sitting where you are I would say but then we have people to actually stop them getting into the British sector, for example. There must be lessons that we are learning about process that involves the military and how we act, the doctrine and so on, that come from illustrations like this set inside the politics of a particular incident.

Major General Houghton: In general terms there is a constant dynamic lessons learned process going on about all sorts of things militarily, both at a tactical and operational level. There are operational level lessons relating to Fallujah to do with command and control, to do with the precision targeting, precision use of weaponry in built-up areas and all those sorts of things. I think the big question that I sense you are getting at is really the strategic lessons about Fallujah. I think in many respects they have got to be bespoke to a particular issue or incident within an overall campaign. The assessments for Fallujah that went into determining whether or not it was a correct political thing to prosecute the clearance of Fallujah or not were essentially political in nature, not military. Clearly Fallujah had taken on some totemic type stature as a safe environment for insurgents from which they could deploy in a relatively safe way suicide bombers out into Baghdad. It was effectively an insurgent base which needed to be dealt with because it represented in a totemic fashion discreditation. It was discrediting the power of Allawi and his government. More than that, the military advice was that there would be a lot of collateral damage but such was the nature of the size of the insurgent force there that actually the balance of advantage was in going to take it out seen against the build-up to elections some two months later. Therefore, a political decision based on the fact that there was a militarily viable option and political advantage to be gained at the strategic level was such that they should go ahead with it. You could then switch to another potential city within the Sunni triangle but the same circumstances would not apply: the nature of the enemy disposition, the level of infrastructure still standing within the city, the relationship of that to the credibility of that government, the proximity to election security and the need to put the insurgents on the back foot. What I am saying is that one could say in retrospect that the strategic lessons learned was that the political decision vis a vis Fallujah was the correct one. You would have to assess every operation on its own merits in a strategic context, you cannot derive a general lesson other than you have got to think through the strategic implications of the prosecution of every operation of that sort of stature and nature.

Mr Havard: Thank you very much.

Q87 Mr Viggers: I would like to ask some questions about reconstruction and the Ministry of Defence's role in reconstruction. Of the $18.4 billion allocated by the American Congress, I understand that only about $10.4 million was obligated, which is the word that I believe is used technically, which means committed for use. Does the slow take-up of the allocated funds concern you and are you involved in this? Can you do something to accelerate it?

Mr Ingram: I do not know what you were told this morning from DFID, I have not got a read-out from this, but I heard your opening comments, Chairman, and I know there is a willingness to give you as much information and as much help as possible from DFID in all this. I do not know precisely what they have said to you. I think I am going to repeat myself a little, maybe because the answer is good and if it is not you will question it. It is about the fact that the financial resources are there in quite sizeable chunks waiting to be delivered. The delivery mechanisms cannot quite be there because there is not this - I have fallen in love with this phrase - humanitarian space, and that is important. However, there are things that we can do, and we are doing, in terms of military delivery through the Quick Impact Projects. I think the figure there is about £30 million that has been allocated and we have used a very large proportion of that and that is available at any point in time simply to move forward and do something. If that becomes exhausted, and I have got to be careful here because we have always got to negotiate extra resources, and there is still a need for it to be done then we will go back to the table and say that this actually achieves things. It is true of any of the funds. That does not mean to say there is a blank cheque for this problem but there is provability in a lot of what we have been doing, certainly in terms of military delivery because it is a case of our people on the ground able to do things, able to deliver on these Quick Impact Projects. Can be more done? The answer must be yes. Are the resources available to do more? The answer is yes. It is matching up that resource with that wish and that hope and that goes back to creating the right conditions.

Q88 Mr Viggers: The Committee has seen in Bosnia-Herzegovina how very effective these Quick Impact Projects can be, but are you content to carry on with projects of this nature rather than to build on Iraqi capability?

Mr Ingram: No. The wish must be to get Iraqi buy-in to all of this and then sourcing it through their mechanisms for them to start delivering with a lot of key and essential support from other agencies, NGOs or DFID sponsored agencies or UN sponsored agencies, and to make sure that the money that is being spent is being spent to good effect. Accountability is important as well in all of this. We only need to look at some other troubled bits of the world where large tranches of EU money have been poured in and we do not know where the money has gone in the early stages. Now there is better and tighter accountability in all of that. If there have been lessons learned they are about accountability and the need to make sure that the money which is being allocated is being spent properly - I talk from a UK perspective on this - and then is being given proper delivery. We must move beyond the Quick Impact Projects and there are programmes to do that and some of them are already delivering in terms of infrastructure, in terms of the clean water canal, in terms of energy projects and other infrastructure projects.

Q89 Mr Viggers: So, sticking with the Quick Impact Projects for the time being, are the Iraqis involved in the identification of projects and the implementation?

Major General Houghton: Yes, there is some local buy-in to those. I think you heard General Bill Rollo saying that they are worked out on a local basis through negotiation with local people and, where possible, it is local labour that is used in order to carry out those projects. That is true of the QUIPS projects, it is also true of the CERPS projects, the Commanders Emergency Reconstruction Programme, which is American money doing a similar thing but within MND(SE) and across the borders.

Q90 Mr Viggers: So, switching back to the main field of reconstruction, the Coalition Provisional Authority's Inspector General's report on financial irregularities was really quite damning. Is the Ministry of Defence involved in seeking to ensure that financial irregularities are corrected?

Mr Ingram: I do not know whether I would necessarily accept all you say about damning. I think it is a proper examination of the need for accountability and visibility of the money which has been put in. The purpose of those audits is to make sure that things have been done properly. Do we have buy-in to that? The answer to that is yes, because on any UK resources that go in we have to make sure, as best we can achieve it, there is payback from that investment and all indications are that is the case. In terms of the CERPS, where it is in our area, we would want to make sure there is proper allocation, a proper return, and that investment has been used to good effect. If it is not happening, and if it is not happening in large quantum, then that would be failure, but failure then has to be understood and addressed and cured.

Q91 Mr Viggers: How closely does the Ministry of Defence work with DFID? Do you work as a team?

Mr Ingram: With DFID?

Q92 Mr Viggers: Yes.

Mr Ingram: The answer is yes, both in theatre and in the UK. That is one of the increasing areas of cross-governmental effort, and there are good examples of that in terms of how the global conflict prevention pool operates and the Africa conflict prevention pool operates, and the three ministries - FCO, Ministry of Defence and DFID - will sit and consider all that at official level and ministerial level, and Treasury will be part of that process as well. Specifically in Iraq, the answer is yes. We have DFID personnel in Iraq, we want to see more of them, we want to create the conditions so more of them and more of those they would sponsor can come in to take forward those projects. So there is very good, close working in all of this. I hope they gave you that answer this morning when you took evidence from them.

Q93 Mr Havard: I think you should declare an interest here in East Kilbride!

Mr Ingram: I should declare an interest, yes, but the Iraqi desk is not run out of the headquarters in East Kilbride, in my constituency, although it should be!

Dr Hutton: Can I add something to that please? As an official, working at official level with DFID colleagues is unprecedentedly close these days. In all three theatres I have had something to do with - Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans - we have had very close working relationships on a day-to-day basis with DFID colleagues. Certainly when the humanitarian response to the Boxing Day tsunami occurred, from day one it was an intimate relationship, involving liaison officers embedded in each other's teams. So I think the relationship these days is better than it has ever been before.

Q94 Mr Viggers: So, since you have mentioned the tsunami, which department was it - was it the Treasury? - which turned down the Royal Navy's enthusiastic hope to be involved in work in Sri Lanka?

Dr Hutton: Perhaps I should not have raised a completely different subject.

Mr Ingram: The Navy was deployed to deal with that humanitarian relief with HMS Chatham and RFA Diligence.

Dr Hutton: I was involved in that, and the whole of that operation was driven by the requirement, as specified by DFID, to respond to what the UN was asking for, and in turn to respond to what the host governments were asking for. So there was no stated requirement for a maritime presence of the kind you are alluding to. The maritime presence which was provided in terms of Chatham and Diligence was very much requested because they had the kinds of capabilities which were appropriate to operate off Sri Lanka.

Mr Ingram: And they were close to the area, so they could deploy quickly as well.

Q95 Chairman: Just a couple of questions on abuse allegations. We have had a number of cases of alleged abuse of Iraqi civilians by British forces, and these have been or are being investigated. We do not intend to examine individual cases but we are interested in the overall picture. Can you tell us how many personnel in total have been subject to these investigations?

Mr Ingram: I do not have the figures on the number of personnel because some of the investigations are mature, some are still developing, and I could not give you ---

Q96 Chairman: Perhaps you could write to us please?

Mr Ingram: Yes, but that will develop. As each investigation becomes mature and if there is any proceeding to judicial process, then the numbers who are then charged is a matter for the prosecuting authorities, it is not a matter for us. This is an independent process, as I know you understand. Certainly we can give you a figure at a point in time.

Q97 Chairman: At a point in time, yes, because we will be producing a report on this.

Mr Ingram: We could also give you at the same point in time the number of investigations which have taken place or are under way, and some background as to those which have been dismissed and those which are still current and live.

Q98 Chairman: Thank you. While the alleged actions of a few men should really not be allowed to over-shadow the contribution made by the overwhelming majority, the cases which have been brought to public notice and the allegations do cause some concerns, and some perhaps generic questions in the MoD about soldiers' ability to move quickly from combat operations to peacekeeping. I do not know whether you think it is wrong that the number of cases question the speed with which we can move from one type of operation to another, but maybe you could comment on that, and what generic conclusions on these two issues have you drawn from the alleged offences?

Mr Ingram: We have always got to examine anything which is happening. Of course in reality these are allegations and those who are accused of doing wrong are innocent until proved guilty, and I cannot comment on any of those cases and you know the reason for that. But the one thing we would always look for is anything we can learn from the process, either as it is evolving as we understand it or what may come out of a final court judgment in one or a number of cases. So there is a process where this would be examined and we would always seek to learn lessons. There is no question at all about that, because this is about ensuring we maintain the good name of the British Army and the British Armed Forces, and it is one which is jealously guarded clearly by the Forces themselves but also by ministers and the Government, and we have always got to be conscious of the fact that if there are lessons to be learned those lessons will be learned.

Q99 Chairman: Have you had cause to review any procedures - ie training standards, standards of employment, command policies, internal regulations, et cetera - for the handling of prisoners as a result of the alleged abuse? Even though you think a number of cases have not been resolved and they are not behind us, have you changed any procedures?

Mr Ingram: I can think of the use of hooding as an example. That was a change and that was an in-theatre decision to change the utilisation of hoods, still recognising that is something which could be used and maybe there are situations where that is desirable for the protection of the person who may be arrested or whatever else. We have to consider this very carefully but that was one area where there was a need for change and that was decided by those in command and it did not necessarily need any political oversight, direction or decision in all of this. That is the point I am making, the Army itself will always look to see what is happening, and if there is a need to alter some of these processes it will do so and ministers will be kept fully advised of this. I do not know if the General has any more to add to that?

Major General Houghton: I am just looking up the detail of dates. We are constantly embarked on a lessons learnt process and the first one was what we called Operation TELIC, lessons which were closed down in August last year and then the next volume was opened up. In the first volume there were something in excess of 400 different lessons. These lessons play back into all sorts of areas - capability areas, doctrinal areas. One of the most immediate ones which need to feed back is into training and into pre-operational deployment training. I could not quantify off the top of my head the number of lessons which have fed back into training requirements, but they apply greater emphasis on elements of training relative to the circumstances in which they are about to deploy. They are such things as detention techniques and those sort of things which one would instantaneously recognise but we need to make certain a greater emphasis is placed on them. There always has been training done on these things but it is a matter of emphasis and time spent in what is a finite amount of time devoted to training in the build up to an operation.

Q100 Chairman: If you would not mind dropping us a note on the changes, that would be helpful.

Mr Ingram: We will do that.

Q101 Mr Roy: Minister, we visited the divisional temporary detention facility at Shaiba and I would like to ask a couple of questions in relation to that. The first question would be on the legality of that facility now there has been a change of status. Exactly where are we on the legality of that facility?

Mr Ingram: I do not know whether you have been advised there is some question on the legality of this; I do not think you will have been. We will always operate within the legal framework and will always apply the highest standards of international law, and that is the framework within which we would operate. I do not think there is any question what we are doing is consistent with the mandates under which we are operating.

Dr Hutton: Multinational forces do have powers under the UNSCR 1546 and the exchange of letters appended to the UNSCR to detain individuals for imperative reasons of security, and that is the over-arching legal framework for facilities of the kind you are referring to.

Q102 Mr Roy: So would you expect that facility to stay there as long as the British Army are there?

Dr Hutton: Pretty much, yes.

Q103 Mr Roy: Can I ask you what plans are afoot to transfer the cases of detainees in British custody there to Iraqi authorities, for example, for criminal prosecution?

Mr Ingram: The transfer out of UK custody into other custody would have to go through the legal framework within which that was happening. Again, it is probably better to write to you on this because there are issues there about the applicability or otherwise of human rights legislation, and of course there was a judgment on one aspect of that against us and we are considering whether to appeal against that, so there is a debate about some of the implications in all of this. But to answer your specific question, we will write to you and set out the legal framework under which we operate and I think that is the best way of getting an understanding from our perspective on this.

Q104 Mr Roy: Can I move on and get you to comment on a newspaper report dated 24 January in The Sun where it was stated a British citizen was transferred from the DTDF to a court in the United Kingdom?

Mr Ingram: I am unsighted on this. I know some of the background but I would not want to go into that and I do not have briefing on this to take you through the precise details of this. Again, because there are legal constructs in all of this, it is important we give you a precise answer. We will do that in writing as well.

Mr Roy: Thank you.

Q105 Mr Cran: Gentlemen, I am slightly diffident about asking questions about the criminal justice system in Iraq, but we have Dr Hutton here speaking to DFID so maybe he is speaking to the Home Office at the same time. In addition to that, establishing the rule of law through a country's criminal justice system is pretty integral to peacekeeping, so you have a direct interest in seeing we have a criminal justice system there which delivers. Are you able to answer any questions before I go into them on this?

Mr Ingram: The answer is we will do our best to answer the questions, but the best defence on this would be that you really should ask the lead department and you have been doing that anyway. We are all integrated in trying to deliver on the overall mission but DFID have specific responsibilities, so it is better targeted at that area, otherwise we will just have to say that it is a matter on which we would have to take advice.

Q106 Mr Cran: You have opened the door and said you will do your best to answer the questions. The Committee would be interested in your perception about the state of the Iraqi criminal justice system. What have we been doing to try and help them develop it, because we have an interest in this of course? Again I know a sovereign government takes the final decisions, I know all of that, but can you help on this?

Mr Ingram: I could not even begin to give you a flavour on this, I do not know whether Dr Hutton can give you anything on this. When I said we would try and give you the best answer on this, I meant not me but those either side of me.

Dr Hutton: Within the constraints the Minister has outlined, because clearly the MoD is not the lead department on this, and I am sorry to mention for the second time another theatre other than Iraq, but we had the same problem in Afghanistan; you need a functioning criminal justice system to which to hand over detainees and to create stability. The only kind of answer I can give you really is purely a factual one about current progress in setting up a criminal justice system. Would that be useful to you?

Q107 Mr Cran: Yes, please.

Dr Hutton: The progress which has been made so far is the establishment of a Judicial Council which has been formed with 23 members and a budget which is independent of the Ministry of Justice, thereby creating independence from the political side of things as any good judicial system ought to have. The Judicial Council is recruiting 876 judges; court administration and the staff are now under the direct control of the Judicial Council. It is currently looking at ways of improving court infrastructure, including buildings and communication, and improving notification procedures to ensure the faster processing of people through the courts. A central criminal court has been formed to hear cases which are of national importance and to provide a model of judicial integrity for the rest of the judicial system. The court is staffed by vetted judges and prosecutors and operates within the regular Iraqi judicial framework. That is a purely factual answer. In terms of how it has progressed beyond that point, you would need to ask another government department.

Mr Cran: Chairman, I think we have to accept that is the fact, which is why I said at the beginning I was diffident about asking questions on this subject. I knew it was not this department's responsibility. I think we must pursue the Home Office if we are interested.

Q108 Mr Havard: Can I ask one short question on this? It seems to me the MoD gets involved because the military gets involved. In Northern Ireland we have a great way of doing it because we work with the police. In Iraq, the military cannot stop to help the Iraqi police when they have found something - the Iraqi police not having forensic or proper process to take that evidence, if you like, in its raw state and process it and put it into the criminal justice system. That seems to me to be the problem area which most of the military will encounter day-to-day. That is what they said to me, they said, "We get this guy, we get all this, we bang him up for a bit but they have to let him go because they have not the processes." They feel frustrated that the police system is not assisting them in getting a result. That is the frustration they have expressed to me.

Mr Ingram: That is a very specific area where improvement has to be made. If people are saying, "That person has stolen from me or assaulted me", they will want to see them arrested.

Q109 Mr Havard: But the British military cannot substitute themselves in the building of the criminal justice system.

Mr Ingram: It has to be wholly integrated. There has to be a system, as you say, for forensic collection, a detention facility, there has to be a judicial process, openness and availability to the legal process, and all that architecture is not there yet although it is beginning. Those are impressive figures but, remember, in terms of insurgency they are actually targeting some of those structures and trying to assassinate some of the individuals to create a collapse in confidence and collapse in the delivery of all of this. So these are real issues which we are seeking to address. Again, the flavour would be that we are moving progressively towards getting better structures, and over time that will become more embedded but I think we still have some way to go.

Q110 Chairman: Minister, what role will the MoD play in the new Post Conflict Reconstruction Unit?

Mr Ingram: In terms of the on-going process?

Q111 Chairman: Yes.

Mr Ingram: I was trying to answer Peter Viggers on this in the same way. Since we are there we will continue to have a role through the QIP, the Quick Impact Programme, through CERPS. Sorry, am I missing your question here?

Major General Houghton: Clearly this has been an initiative slightly borne of the Iraqi experience, what might be generally termed "phase 4 planning", ie the post-conflict phase of an operation needs seeing to ab initio, before the operation launches. Therefore this is a fusion, as you are aware, within the unit of personnel from DFID, MoD and FCO. The MoD has furnished the first director of the PCRU and has put an Army full colonel into one of the key sub-directorate roles. Increasingly, we would wish - and this was already being acted out in reality at the time of the tsunami - elements of the PCRU deployed with military people to see what role they could play in that because in many respects it had a similar flavour to a post-conflict type circumstance. The PCRU have already been on a military exercise which exercised these things at the back end of last year. We are wanting to involve the PCRU in planning in relation to the Headquarters ARC deployment to Afghanistan. The great desire from the Ministry of Defence perspective is that the PCRU will be one of the significant lessons learned in phase four planning and to involve them at the very outset of potential military operations so the post-conflict phase runs that bit more smoothly.

Q112 Chairman: That is very helpful. Thank you. The Ministry of Defence published a very helpful document on the lessons learnt in OP TELIC. We have embarked on the process of looking at the lessons learnt post-war ending, and you have said on a number of occasions, Minister and Major General Houghton, that you have been ticking off and writing about lessons learnt. Is there any intention of publishing a document along the lines of the original Lessons Learnt from the war?

Mr Ingram: Whether there is an intention or not, it seems to me it is desirable that we publish what we can publish. Sometimes if it impinges, as I know you appreciate, on matters which we would not want others to know about, in terms of those who have been posing a threat to us - and that is not the politicians but some of those elements we have to find ourselves taking action against in theatre - then we would not want to spill out a lot of detailed doctrines and so on. But the instinct now within the Ministry of Defence is to publish, and that may or may not be conditioned by Freedom of Information requirements, but there is a willingness and desire to give as much information as possible because that gives a better understanding of what we are dealing with. I do not know specifically whether there is a plan to publish by a date but the instinct - and I take note of the question - would be to tell as much information as possible.

Chairman: Thank you all very much. It is probably your last appearance before this Committee, and you will be pleased to know it is probably my last appearance ---

Mr Cran: As Chairman and in the public sense.

Q113 Chairman: --- unless we rush to do another inquiry. Thank you very much, all of you, for your helpful contributions over the last few years.

Mr Ingram: Thank you too for all your helpful questions and your understanding when we do not quite have the answers.

Q114 Chairman: You can have your interview without coffee at 10 Downing Street now, Minister.

Mr Ingram: Thank you very much.