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Mr. Ancram: The Secretary of State will note that my words today are largely not my own—they are the words of former Chiefs of the Defence Staff. Those men are speaking out in that way, because they realise that the general events surrounding those particular cases have created an environment, atmosphere and psychology in the armed forces that is unhelpful to their operations, and could be very damaging indeed in future. The right hon. Gentleman must understand that this is not rhetoric—this is a reality that is understood by the former Chiefs of the Defence Staff. I hope that he will take it on board and address it.
John Reid:
Not only do I take that seriously but I met the Chiefs of the Defence Staff a considerable time ago to discuss this precise issue. I did not announce that publicly until today, because I did not intend to make capital out of it. I hope, however, that that reassures the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I take that issue and the support of our troops seriously. Whoever made the original remark, I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to dissociate himself from implications that there are criticisms to be levelled, particularly about a lack of moral courage or otherwise, at the Chiefs of the Defence Staff. They do a very difficult job, and they are very brave people, both morally and physically. They have shown that in the past, and they are as concerned as I am to support morale. In a democracy with a separation between the legal process and political decisions, they cannot intervene. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows that they are prevented from so doing, so to try to criticise them for not intervening is unfair. That is all that I am asking. He can attack me as much as he likes, but I urge him to withdraw from attacks on the chiefs of staff.
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Mr. Ancram: I do not think that in anything I have said—or, indeed, in what was said by the former Chiefs of the Defence Staff—I have attacked any serving soldier. What I am saying to the Secretary of State is that there is a genuine problem on the ground. I am glad that he acknowledges that. For the well-being of our troops, particularly those who are engaged in dangerous missions overseas on our behalf, that cannot be allowed to continue. Far from the buoyant Army that was described by the Minister of State, the armed forces have problems. Having said that I know the Secretary of State has their interests at heart, I hope that he will address the problems not just with rhetoric, but by finding a way to give the armed forces the moral support that they deserve.
I turn to some of the tasks undertaken by our armed forces. Those tasks may be overseas, but they are undertaken because they are part of the way that we defend ourselves. I said earlier that our involvement in Afghanistan was based on article 51, which is about self-defence. I would argue that even in Iraq, given the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, what we are doing relates not only to that country but to our security in the United Kingdom.
The issues arising in these areas are complex. In Afghanistan, the broadening of ISAF control over the areas where new provincial reconstruction teams are deployed may lead to merging the command structures of Operation Enduring Freedom and the NATO/ISAF operation. We are led to believe—the Secretary of State may know more about this than I do, but I saw a report this morning—that not only France but now Belgium could yet veto any integration of US-led forces and NATO-led forces under one command. What is the Government's position on this?
What role will UK forces play—peacekeeping, counter-insurgency, counter-narcotics, or a combination of them all? If it is a combination, is it seriously suggested that the British contingent could operate under a number of different commands? How will that affect the rules of engagement? The idea that UK forces could be asked to operate under two rules of engagement, with the sort of confusion that arose in Kosovo, is unthinkable. Harmonisation of the rules of engagement of each of the participating countries is essential.
Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that incipient deployments of additional troops to Afghanistan, if and when the decision is made, will not be at the expense of our commitment in Iraq? I may have been wrong in suggesting that requests for further troops in Iraq have been made. It would be extremely damaging and dangerous at this moment if our troops in southern Iraq were moved over to Afghanistan, leaving a vacuum there.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West) (Con):
On 10 November, at column 35, the Secretary of State spelled out in answer to me the high stakes in Iraq. He used terms that were very similar to the language of a speech by Senator John McCain on that very day. Senator McCain's conclusion was that we may have to ramp up our troops in Iraq. I am worried about the mood music and all the talk of withdrawal and troops coming home next year, when in fact the requirement may be the opposite.
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Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend who, as the House knows, has had experience on the ground in Iraq. I listened carefully to what he said, and he is right. We must be very careful not to persuade ourselves, possibly for trans-Atlantic political reasons, that we are getting to a stage where a draw-down can take place.
On Monday the Secretary of State admitted, in answer to a question from me, that the proportion of violent contacts between our troops and the insurgents initiated by the insurgents rather than by our troops in the past 12 months has gone up. That is a significant measure. It hardly suggests progress in the fight against insurgency. It rather suggests, as my hon. Friend said, that recent reports of drawing down the numbers of troops in Iraq are over-optimistic.
I want to mention strategy. I shall not enlarge on this, as I have spoken for a long time already. When I was in Washington recently, I was told about the concern over tactics and strategy in Iraq. It was described to me, perhaps infelicitously, in terms of the game called Whack-a-mole. In the game, little moles appear out of a board, and one tries to hit them in order to score. If one does not hit them, one does not score. It was put to me that a lot of the counter-insurgency work in Iraq is a matter of reacting to where the insurgent appears. I have been told that the Pentagon is examining the oil-spot concept, which we should examine too, in order to begin to establish stability on the ground. [Interruption.] The man who introduced it into current thinking described the concept as an oil spot, because it has the ability to spread. I hope that we are examining that concept, because there are lessons to be learned.
When we discuss defence in the United Kingdom, any consideration of our military commitments in Iraq or Afghanistan must encompass the general time scale within which our troops will come home. As the Secretary of State knows, I have never sought a firm date, which apart from its impracticability would send a dangerous signal to the insurgents. However, I continue to seek benchmarks against which to assess when the job is done. The time scale was once described to me as the length of a piece of string, but that is no longer good enough, and the string must have knots in it to serve as points of reference as we move along.
I hope that it has become apparent that defence in the United Kingdom is now indivisible from our wider commitments overseas. They are different elements of a single narrative, and the common thread is the dedicated, committed, courageous and selfless men and women who put themselves and their lives on the line for our country. I despair of this Government, who ask so much of the armed forces and give so little, and I despair of the resolve of the MOD to fight its corner in the corridors of Whitehall and the inner sanctums of the Treasury. We know that we have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who neither values nor understands our armed forces, and a Prime Minister who talks big but walks small on the welfare of our servicemen and women.
In a democracy, there should always be an overriding understanding that, if we commit our armed forces to action, we have a total responsibility for seeing that they are adequately manned, adequately equipped, adequately trained and adequately supported. The
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Government fail on all those counts, but it is not too late for them to turn over a new leaf and start to fulfil their responsibilities, and I urge them to do so.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. May I remind all hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 15-minute time limit on speeches by Back Benchers?
2.37 pm
Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab): I am sorry that the Secretary of State is about to leave—ah, he has decided to return. It is not for me to give a man of his calibre advice, but having heard the shadow spokesman's comments, I remind the Secretary of State to beware Greeks and Tories bearing gifts, even if they are only encomiums of praise. I do not know what it does for my right hon. Friend, but it makes me very uneasy when there is such a closeness between the Secretary of State and the Opposition spokesman.
I had the pleasure of watching a drama on television last night about Siegfried Sassoon, who was a great poet. The drama was about his treatment in a hospital in Scotland, where one of his co-rehabilitees was another great war poet, Wilfred Owen. The immortal lines of Wilfred Owen's greatest poem come to mind:
No one wants to see the modern soldier reduced to the condition of soldiers in the first world war.
It was interesting to hear Sir Ian Blair deliver the Dimbleby lecture and discuss the need for a great and open debate on policing in this country. His speech reminded me that the Secretary of State for Defence recently said that there should be a national debate about what replaces Trident, and I want to discuss the changed circumstances and whether we need to replace Trident.
The strategic defence review reported in 1998. The House of Commons Library note on the review makes the valid remark that the SDR then was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. However, it did not face up in a radical way to many of the circumstances that it should have done, but continued the pre-existing policy.
The one thing on which I will agree with the Government is that circumstances have changed dramatically since 9/11. We are told that it was year zero and that all the rules of the game have changed. If so, we need a proper review of our overall defensive strategy.
Before the debate, I jotted down some of the things that have happened since 9/11 to change dramatically our stance, or implied stance, given our close relationship with the United States on a bilateral basis and through NATO. Our close allies, to whom, we are told, we are inextricably linked, are considering the weaponisation of space. Members on both sides of the House recently went to a briefing with the Washington-based Centre for Defence Studies on exactly how the air force is developing plans for that. The Americans have adopted the notion of full spectrum dominance, with the aspiration of dominating land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. They have taken up the notion of
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pre-emptive war, which we thought was unacceptable for the west. They have even started to moot, with some support from the previous Secretary of State for Defence, the idea that nuclear strikes on non-nuclear countries, even in a pre-emptive mode, would be feasible. There have been various withdrawals from treaties to which we all subscribed, and a failure to implement others, including those that have a direct impact on whether Trident is replaced.
We are entering a time frame in which we are considering earmarking expenditure for Trident's successor. There is ample evidence that a lot of money has been allocated in preparation for the new generation of warheads for it. Refitting has already taken place at Aldermaston.
We are in a different world and about to embark on a new course. There is no more suitable time for a complete review of what our defence objectives, strategy and priorities should be.
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