Debate on the Address

The Secretary of State makes my point for me. My point is that what we should be doing in this great nation of ours is deciding what we wish to do about foreign policy, and that we should be reasonably content that there are capabilities with which to carry it out. It should never be the case that the Foreign Secretary stands at the Dispatch Box and says ““I should like, Mr Speaker, to dial X, Y or Z around the world, but sadly I have not the capabilities to do it””—but I suspect that that is precisely the position in which we are at this moment. Before I leave the difficult subjects of Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been mentioned so much this afternoon, let me say that I bitterly regret one event in my parliamentary career so far. I resigned, or moved on, as one of the shadow Defence Ministers at the time of the invasion of Iraq because I felt so strongly that it was the wrong thing to do. The bit I regret is that the Whips persuaded me not to vote against the war, but to abstain. In retrospect, I strongly wish that I had had the power of my own convictions, voted against the war and returned to the Back Benches then rather than subsequently. The war was wrong, it has been handled entirely wrongly, and now I find that virtually the whole House supports my position on it. The important question that we must consider this afternoon, however, is not just whether what has been done in Iraq and Afghanistan is right, wrong or indifferent—the House has heard a great many thoughts on that—but whether we are able to carry out the tasks that we have been asked to carry out, there and elsewhere. The truth is that we are suffering from three very significant problems in our armed services, and the Government are showing no inclination whatever to put them right. The first problem involves numbers. With 102,000 soldiers, the British Army is now the smallest army we have had since Waterloo. We are not able to perform many of the tasks that we would like to perform. Reserves—the Territorial Army—are being used for tasks that we would never have contemplated when I served in the TA for seven years. If I had been told ““You will almost certainly spend six or 12 months in Iraq or Afghanistan, often fighting with bayonets fixed””, I would not have been too happy about the prospect, although it is now the norm. The worrying thing is that in the last two or three years, a quarter of the reserves—some 13,400 soldiers—have left. The fact is that our reserves are becoming smaller and smaller as the dependence of the regular Army on them becomes bigger and bigger. We have problems with both recruitment and retention. I think it right for us to spend some time this afternoon asking ourselves why that should be. The first and most obvious reason for disaffection in the armed services is, of course, equipment. There were all kinds of causes célèbres during the Iraq crisis when proper equipment was not issued to our services: they did not have the right body armour, or the right kind of desertification for the tanks. That is quite wrong. We cannot ask our boys—and our girls—to go off to dangerous parts of the world and do things without giving them the equipment that they need, including large equipment. It was interesting to hear Brigadier Lorimer—whom the Secretary of State called General Lorimer earlier—saying that he wants tanks. He wants Warriors. He wants another battalion of soldiers, as he said very publicly and straightforwardly, but he ain’t getting them. Before the Secretary of State leaps to his feet and says that Brigadier Lorimer did not say that, let me point out that it is very interesting that he is said to have said it. It is also very interesting that his predecessor, Brigadier Butler—grandson of the great Rab Butler, incidentally—said on the ““Today”” programme that he did not have the resources he needed to carry out the tasks that he was required to perform in Afghanistan. I remember it well. The Secretary of State will immediately leap to his feet and deny it, but it was on the ““Today”” programme and the extract is available on paper. Now we have the Chief of the General Staff, no less, saying that the Army is close to breaking point and that he needs more equipment. Yet the politicians sit on the Front Bench and laugh. They say ““These generals did not say that””, or ““These generals are wrong. They have plenty of capabilities. They can do what they like.”” I suspect that I would rather listen to Brigadier Lorimer, Brigadier Butler and General Sir Richard Dannatt than listen to them.