Iraq: Future Strategic Relationship

I appreciate that I am testing the hon. Lady's patience, but this is a fundamental point. She says that al-Qaeda became a problem, but it was the absence of a plan that allowed al-Qaeda to take advantage of the security vacuum that was then created. If we had had a plan, which would have involved the Department for International Development—DFID is the problem here because of the lack of Whitehall co-ordination between the two Departments—we could have gone into the country, taking advantage of the fragile umbrella of security that we had created, to build reconstruction and development. If we had done that, al-Qaeda would not have been allowed to step in. It was not in the country before March 2003.