Oral Answers to Questions
Derek Twigg Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Fox
I have had conversations with ministerial colleagues over this and although I am broadly sympathetic to some of the changes outlined, the hon. Lady is right that this is a Justice lead. For her to say that the Government simply use cost as a means of having to make reductions is, again, not to understand what it is to inherit a budget with a £38 billion black hole. Of course we have to learn to live within our means, and we do not yet know from the Opposition what their budget would be and which parts of the SDSR they accept and do not accept. In fact, we hear very little from them except negative criticism. It seems they have nothing constructive at all to say on the matter.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
7. What recent discussions he has had on the medical care of wounded service personnel and veterans.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
Given the importance that the whole Government, and especially my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, place on this issue, both he and I have numerous discussions with ministerial colleagues and others across the Department, Government and the community and voluntary sector on a regular basis.
Derek Twigg
I thank the Minister for his answer. He will be aware of the concerns expressed by families recently about the care for seriously wounded and injured service personnel who will have to be discharged from the armed forces because of their injuries—including about their care in the NHS thereafter. What mechanisms have he and his colleagues put in place to ensure that those service personnel get the same standard of care as that provided currently by Defence Medical Services?
Oral Answers to Questions
Derek Twigg Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
I have great pleasure in doing exactly that and paying tribute to all those who are serving in Afghanistan, who will be away from their families over Christmas. Our thoughts are with the families as well. On the contribution being made in Helmand by our friends and allies from Denmark and Estonia, they have both been terrific and resolute allies to us and it will be my pleasure to visit both countries later this week to thank them for what they are doing and to discuss future co-operation.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
On “The Andrew Marr Show” yesterday, the former Prime Minister, John Major, said
“what I am wary of is giving advance notice of leaving. If you were Taliban what would you do on hearing that troops were leaving in 12 to 24 months? I think you would just wait until they had gone. We have to be clear what we are doing and”
why we are doing it.
Can the Secretary of State tell us why he thinks the former Prime Minister, who is supportive of the current Prime Minister, feels the need to say that now?
Dr Fox
As I said, there are no short-term milestones in terms of numbers, so there is no possibility of us setting out in advance the numbers that withdraw in 12 or 24 months. The Prime Minister made it clear that we may be able to reduce troop numbers if conditions on the ground are suitable.
UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan
Derek Twigg Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
It has been fashionable in some quarters to say that the House of Commons is increasingly irrelevant in our national life, and that the Executive have become too powerful. Indeed, in recent times the Executive have become too powerful, reaching a zenith in parts of the Blair Administration when the House of Commons was reduced to Downing street in Parliament.
Today marks a very welcome departure. I congratulate all those involved in this wise enterprise. It is high time that Members of the House of Commons, not just the Government and not just the Opposition, have the ability to determine what we discuss in the Chamber.
No subject could be more important than Afghanistan. The hardest thing that a Defence Secretary, or indeed a Prime Minister, has to do is to write to the bereaved families of those killed in action, yet sad though that task is, none of us can fully understand the pain of loss endured by the families themselves. I therefore add my condolences to those of Members on both sides of the House who have paid tribute to the heroic members of our armed forces who have sacrificed themselves for our national security. I pay tribute to Dr Karen Woo, whose courage and dedication mirror that of many civilians who are doing what they can to help in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. We should remember at all times the contribution that they make to trying to create a better world.
What is said in this House matters, particularly in relation to Afghanistan. When we debate that subject here we need to be aware of who is listening: first, the British public; secondly, our armed forces; thirdly, our allies and partners; and fourthly, our opponents and enemies, the disparate insurgency in Afghanistan—the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Each of those audiences is important in different ways. That means not that we are restricted in any way as to what we can say in the House of Commons, but that we should carefully weigh up how we may be interpreted.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the commitment to leave in five years, which he has backed, will be welcomed by the Taliban or seen as a negative?
Dr Fox
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to, I shall come to withdrawal and the long-term implications in due course.
Our military resilience is, in part, dependent on the support of our people—it always has been. The British public need to know that there are clear reasons for being in Afghanistan and that we have clear aims and the right strategy. They need to know why we cannot bring our troops home immediately, as many people want, what we are achieving, and what success will look like. Let me tackle those points first.
Saturday marks the ninth anniversary of the al-Qaeda atrocities that killed almost 3,000 innocent people, including 66 British citizens, in Manhattan. The horror of watching those scenes replayed on television does not diminish with time. The carnage did not discriminate nationality, colour or creed. It changed the lives of thousands of families and it changed the way political leaders saw the world. If we want our people, civilian and military, to be willing to pay the price of success, they need to understand the cost of failure—9/11 is what failure looks like. It is what trans-national terrorism looks like, and what it will look like again if we fail to confront it.
Our clear aim in Afghanistan is to prevent Afghan territory from again being used by al-Qaeda as a base from which to plan attacks on the United Kingdom and our allies. Our engagement in Afghanistan is first and foremost about national security. It is not the only place where we are confronting violent extremists, but it is crucial in that battle. The presence of ISAF—the international security assistance force—prevents al-Qaeda and the Taliban regime from returning while we train Afghan security forces to take over the task for themselves.
We do not seek a perfect Afghanistan, but one able to maintain its own security and prevent the return of al-Qaeda. That aim also requires working with Pakistan to enhance the Pakistanis’ ability to tackle the threat from their side of the border. In Afghanistan, success means, first, continuing to reverse the momentum of the Taliban-led insurgency. Our second aim is to contain and reduce the threat from the insurgency to a level that allows the Afghan Government to manage it themselves. Our third aim is creating a system of national security and governance that is stable and capable enough for the Afghan Government to provide internal security on an enduring basis. That is why we are supporting more effective Afghan governance at every level, and building up the capability of the Afghan national security forces as rapidly as is feasible.
Mr Ainsworth
I know the hon. Gentleman’s views and that he has tabled an amendment to the motion. He has spoken on this issue previously, and he has given a lot of thought to it, but the reason he gave is not one of the reasons given publicly for the strategies that are being pursued. Perhaps we need a debate in this country on whether we are sufficiently steely or enduring to pursue prolonged counter-insurgency conflicts, but that is not the reason for the Government’s strategy. If it is, let the Government encourage such a debate and let us have it in the House. However, what he says is not what the Government are saying. He has added yet more complexity to the reasons for what the Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister are saying.
Derek Twigg
Perhaps there is some clever strategy to say to Karzai, “You’ve got to get your act together. We’re getting out in five years so get it sorted,” but I would find that quite bizarre given the nature of Afghanistan politics and Karzai. However, there is another question. If we are 100% committed because Afghanistan is so important to our national security, why are we imposing a five-year deadline? I cannot find an historical precedent for that.
Mr Ainsworth
I have heard lots of reasons given for that, and we just heard another from the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). There is a genuine need to put pressure on the Afghan Government to make the necessary improvements in governance and security force capability—that is perfectly legitimate, as the Defence Secretary says—but we will not do that by giving succour to the enemy, as General Sir Mike Jackson said we may well be doing. The Government need to get to grips with that.
Rory Stewart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Of course, Afghans must be allowed to do their own politics, and whether they have a decentralised or a centralised state or recognise ethnic boundaries is up to them. Our role is to accept the limits of our power and accept that there are things we cannot do. There are things we can do, but they have nothing to do with troop surges or counter-insurgency. We must find a moment—this is why the 2015 deadline is absolutely correct—at which we say about the current strategy, “Enough, no more. We’ve done enough.”
What then will we do after 2015? I suggest that with the end of UK combat operations in Afghanistan, we concentrate on three things: continuing limited counter-terrorism operations; continuing to support development projects, probably in the centre and the north of the country; and continuing to try to ensure a political solution, or, to put it another way, to decrease the likelihood of a civil war and increase the likelihood of a political solution by gaining leverage over the Taliban.
Is this as scary as we believe? Is this really the nightmare we have conjured? No. The Taliban are unlikely to be able to take over Afghanistan, because this is not the mid-1990s. This is not groundhog day—we are not repeating 1996. In 1996, when the Taliban came swarming into Kabul, mujaheddin were shelling each other in the centre of the city, the Afghan people were appalled by years of corrupt, abusive government, and the Taliban were untested—and there were no foreign troops on the ground.
Today we are in a completely different situation. The Taliban are discredited from the time when they were in government. There is much more coherence between the central and northern groups. There is very little likelihood of the Taliban being able to present a conventional threat. If they try to roll artillery or tanks up the main streets, as they did then, we can deal with that. That does not mean that they are not going to increase their presence in the south and east of the country—they almost certainly will. But even if they do, it is extremely unlikely that they will invite back al-Qaeda in the way that they did in 2001. From their point of view, that was their No. 1 mistake. If they had not invited in al-Qaeda, they would still be in power. Even if they do invite back al-Qaeda, it is something that we can manage. We have the willpower, the technology and the public support to deal with it in a way that we did not in the 1990s.
Derek Twigg
The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting—I have heard this in a number of spheres—that we abandon the south-west and south-east of the country and that the Taliban will move back, but they will not be as bad as they were last time. I do not know what evidence he or those who are pursuing this strategy have for that. He will recall that the Taliban started off in a very localised way in Kandahar and then moved up the country, and never once has there been peace throughout the country. I do not see how we can have trust in that situation starting again.
Rory Stewart
I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am not suggesting that the Taliban are nice people. These threats, and the fears and worries that we have, are very real. The Taliban are horrendous people. Terrorist threats from Afghanistan are genuine, as are the threats to Pakistan, to our credibility and to the Afghan people. However, the point is that “ought” implies “can”. We do not have a moral obligation to do what we cannot do. After nine years, we have failed to demonstrate that the Afghan Government can take over control. Our troops can fight all they want, and they do it very well, but when we withdraw, the Afghan Government will not be robust enough to take over. We therefore need to accept that rather than what I, and the hon. Gentleman, would like, which is being able to guarantee the Taliban’s disappearance, we need to contain and manage the situation.
What does this mean for UK foreign policy? It means beginning a new approach where we recognise—this is the central point that we would all agree on—that we have other priorities in the world. Afghanistan is not the be-all and end-all. We cannot bet all our money and all our troops on this one place. Pakistan matters more in terms of terrorism, Egypt matters more in terms of regional stability, and sub-Saharan Africa matters more in terms of poverty, and that is before we get on to Iran, North Korea or China. The lesson that we should take, and the reason why the 2015 deadline is correct, is that we should recognise the limits of our knowledge, power and legitimacy. And understand that although we cannot do as much as we pretend, we can do much more than we fear. The only wisdom is the wisdom of humility.
Afghanistan
Derek Twigg Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Although I am not completely convinced about the reasons for the movements that the Secretary of State described today, in fairness, I do not have the facts and intelligence that he has. I am also concerned about the Prime Minister’s statement that we should be out of Afghanistan in five years, which has been repeated. Will that statement encourage or discourage the Taliban in their operations against our forces?
Dr Fox
We intend to follow the strategy through. We believe that it is the correct strategy, and that it is likely to produce success in the time scales outlined. I should reiterate to the hon. Gentleman that General McChrystal initially assessed that the Afghan national security forces would be able to take on the role themselves in 2013. We amended that as part of the strategy, to 2014, because we believe that that is a more realistic target. What the Prime Minister set out is entirely consistent with the strategy. The Afghan national security forces can be expected to take full control of their own security by 2014, as set out in the strategy by General McChrystal.
Oral Answers to Questions
Derek Twigg Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Robathan
On the broader issue, I have had two meetings in the past week on the military covenant and its implications. My hon. Friend mentions mental health in particular. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who is in his place, is considering health issues and will report this summer on all such issues, including the mental health needs of ex-service personnel.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
13. Whether he has considered a timetable for the withdrawal of UK forces from Afghanistan.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
United Kingdom forces are in Afghanistan as part of an international coalition. We will take decisions on troop numbers in consultation with our partners.
Derek Twigg
Was the Secretary of State given advance notice of the Prime Minister’s statement in Canada recently that he wanted our armed forces home by 2015, and did No. 10 see a copy of the Secretary of State’s speech before he made it in Washington last week?
Dr Fox
The G8 in Canada in June sent a collective signal that we want Afghan national security forces to assume increasing responsibility for security within five years. 2015 is a full year beyond General McChrystal’s assessment of ANSF capability and it is entirely realistic that we will not have combat troops in Afghanistan at that time.