Middle East: Security

James Gray Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

At present, we, the French and even the United States consistently talk with the likes of the Syrian Democratic Forces to ensure that the prisons are still guarded and that we provide whatever support we can to help them with that. Like the hon. Gentleman, we recognise the importance of those prisons, which contain lots of foreign fighters as well as more localised fighters. We do not want Daesh to be reborn in those prisons, and it is incredibly important that we are able to stay in Iraq because we are partly going to deal with that situation in partnership with the Iraqis—there are Iraqi foreign fighters and others. We urge the Iraqi Government to reconsider their vote, because we think it would be useful to stay to secure that situation.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

As the Secretary of State says, the British Army has played a crucial role in training Iraqi and Kurdish troops; I have seen it with my own eyes. Does he agree not only that it is essential that we safeguard our troops in Iraq for their own safety but that the whole future of our middle east policy is dependent on our continuing to contain Daesh in Iraq, in which the armed forces have an extremely important part to play?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Nation building in Iraq is really important—not just for us, but for the people of Iraq. We have only suspended the training; we have not stopped it, because we still think it is really important to help with capacity building and security forces. We will seek to restart the training as soon as possible.