Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

George Howarth Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We hope that Assad will not continue in place for a day longer than is necessary. There is no future for Syria with Assad still in place. As well as the military campaign and the counter-ideology campaign, we now need to work with friends in the region, as has already been said, to help to promote a comprehensive and moderate democratic Government in Syria that has the confidence of all the communities there, including the Alawite community, from which Assad originally came.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that there is a huge difference between making this statement and making a case? Will he acknowledge that if he is going to take this House and the wider public with him over the coming months, he will need to make a better case than he has made today?

[Michael Fallon]

I hope I have made the case, first, that embedding UK personnel in other forces is absolutely standard and normal and has been going on for years—there is nothing unusual about this particular situation; and, secondly, that the UK personnel who have been embedded have been embedded in actions that we support. We support what the Americans have been doing in Syria, as well as the action they have been taking in Iraq. That action is legal and we welcome it, and it is of course action in which they would like us to join.