"If it is safe to assume that these Russian warships were not planning to bombard Mr Salmond, may we assume that they were there to establish the unimpeded rights of Russia to exploit oil in the Arctic? If so, will we have reciprocal rights to look for oil in the …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"May I repeat to my right hon. Friend what I said unavailingly to his five Labour predecessors as Defence Secretary that the more frequently western forces intervene in Muslim countries, the greater will be the spread of jihadism throughout the whole Islamic world and the higher the threat of terrorism …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"My right hon. Friend’s statement is an echo of the Geddes axe statement of the 1920s, for which the country, Europe and the rest of the world ultimately paid a very heavy price. One of the main reasons national service was abandoned was that it was decided that too many …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"I welcome my right hon. Friend to his vitally important post and wish him every success in it, but may I commiserate with him, as I have with his six predecessors, on bearing responsibility for what, despite the tremendous bravery of our troops, I have always predicted since 2002, future …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"Without, obviously, asking the Secretary of State to go into any sort of detail, will he make absolutely certain that the phasing out of Nimrod will not make our submarines more vulnerable to counter-attack?..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"May I ask my right hon. Friend, the sixth successive Defence Minister to whom I have pointed out the utter folly of our current intervention in Afghanistan—four of the quintet before him have wisely fled the House, and the first has just been banned from the Tea Room for five …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"As I am married to a French woman, I have some experience of the unpredictability of Anglo-French relations, so may I take the Secretary of State back to the run-up to the Iraq war, when President Bush and Mr Tony Blair were hellbent on invading Iraq but President Chirac took …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"Why did British Ministers choose to ignore the advice given to them on Afghanistan by our exceptionally distinguished former ambassador to Kabul, as a result of which he has asked to be transferred to other duties?..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech
"As the role of NATO in Afghanistan is increasingly criticised and the threat of terrorism here comes far more from our own disaffected Muslims than from the Tora Bora mountains, is it not rather bizarre that from on high we have heard recently that there are likely to be cuts …..." Peter Tapsell - View Speech