Report of the Iraq Inquiry

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I heard my right hon. Friend’s speech earlier today, in which he made that point at some length. I caution him against over-complicating the structure we have and setting up sub-committees of it. The armed forces are represented through the Chief of the Defence Staff, who attends not only the NSC, but the officials’ meeting that precedes it.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is, I am delighted to say, serving in his current role under his second Prime Minister, and I trust he will serve under several more yet. [Interruption.] If we keep having leadership crises. As he has experience of Cabinet Government and the NSC, and as he remembers serving in government decades ago under former Prime Ministers, will he, with the new leader of the Government, consider the possibility of the Cabinet sitting for slightly longer than one and a half hours each week, particularly when pressing issues are on the agenda, and of more readily having individual briefings before issues are considered at Cabinet?

Similarly, will my right hon. Friend consider whether the NSC might be more flexible as to the length of meetings, whether briefings might be given to members before the NSC sits, and whether matters might be returned to at subsequent meetings if there is a basis for challenging the advice given? We obviously have a difficult four years to go through; does my right hon. Friend agree that more collective government might be a good way of proceeding?

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, particularly for his kind words. I am now serving my fourth Conservative Prime Minister; I do not think I have quite matched my right hon. and learned Friend’s record, but I am closing in on it. I will not be drawn on the possibility of serving yet another, given that my right hon. Friend the new Prime Minister has only been in office for a day. She and I did sit together on the NSC, as well as in Cabinet, and one can always look at these things again. It is not for me to instruct the new Prime Minister on how to run her Cabinet, but I will certainly ensure that my right hon. and learned Friend’s suggestion is passed on.

The NSC is a significant improvement on what went before it, in my right hon. and learned Friend’s time in government, and it is certainly an improvement on the kind of sofa government that the Chilcot report exposes. The NSC does not operate in a vacuum. The National Security Adviser, who attends it, is now a well-established position in Government, supported by a strong team, and the NSC and the adviser are supported by a structure of cross-government boards and sub-committees, to which the Ministry of Defence makes a full contribution. To answer the point raised by the Chairman of the Defence Committee, there is no shortage of ways in which the views of the chiefs are brought forward in that structure.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I find it hard to construe answering a freedom of information request as some kind of concealment. When we were asked the question, we answered it. Let me be very clear about what the practice has been under successive Governments. There is nothing new about embedding; it has been going on for the past 40 or 50 years. We have had our forces embedded with other countries’ forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Libyan campaign, and most recently with the French in Mali. There is absolutely nothing new about that. The hon. Gentleman asked me about the parallel with Vietnam. There is no parallel, because the British Government at the time did not agree with the American action in Vietnam. We do agree with the American action in Syria, and I hope that the shadow Secretary of State also supports the American action in Syria, which is helping to keep our streets safe. That is action that we agree with, that is legal and that we fully support.

As for keeping Parliament informed, it has been standard practice not to publicise the placing of embeds with other countries’ forces, as they are their forces and their operation. However, we will always confirm details if and when asked to do so. There have been, over the years, a number of parliamentary questions asking for details of embedded forces, and we have replied to them and we will go on doing that.

The hon. Gentleman asks about the risk to our pilots. There is always risk in any military operation. I can tell him that coalition aircraft are well equipped to defend themselves and there are recovery procedures in place, but he will understand that I am certainly not, on the Floor of the House, going to go into details of those defensive and recovery measures. Nor will I comment on his question about special forces—as you know, Mr Speaker, we do not discuss details of the operation of special forces. The provision of more unmanned aircraft and the training of the pilots we need to operate them will of course be matters for the strategic defence and security review.

Let me say in conclusion that as part of the coalition we support the American actions in Syria and the strikes that are being carried out there by American aircraft, by Canadian aircraft and by Gulf states’ aircraft. They are helping to defeat ISIL and are doing so in a way that helps to keep this country safe.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that, for some time now, both in Iraq and in Syria, there has been no functioning Government exercising sovereign power over large parts of the territory of either state, and the Sykes-Picot line, which was always an artificial boundary between the two so-called countries, has probably been consigned to the dustbin of history? Does he therefore accept that it is rather legalistic to argue about whether strikes are being carried out over Iraq and Syria, and that the policy decision to be made is whether we should continue to make our proper contribution to the airstrikes that the international coalition is conducting against the territory that ISIL now uses as its base, and Parliament should therefore lift this artificial distinction between strikes in Iraq and strikes in Syria?

[Michael Fallon]

I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. ISIL draws no legal distinction regarding which side of the Sykes-Picot line it is operating on. Actions by American, Canadian and other forces in Syria are legal because they contribute to the collective self-defence of the legitimate Government of Iraq where the Government of Syria are unwilling and unable to deal with ISIL at its source in northern Syria. Like him, I think the time will come when this new Parliament will have to reconsider whether we are doing enough to tackle ISIL at its source.

Al-Sweady Inquiry Report

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for explaining the circumstances in which the public inquiry came into being. He has much closer knowledge of it than others, because he was responsible for setting it up. He is right: the price that we pay for the reputation of our armed forces is that when such allegations are made—wherever they come from—they must be investigated, and they are investigated immediately in the field by the Royal Military Police and their special investigators. It is right that that happens.

The right hon. Gentleman made an important point about costs, and the fact that certain unscrupulous lawyers appear to be benefiting directly, at public expense, from their ability to trigger inquiries such as this. We need to look into how that might be curtailed, and I welcome his suggestion that the matter might be pursued on a genuinely bipartisan basis.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree—he appears to—that, while it is essential for a country with values such as ours to hold inquiries into the serious allegations against our armed forces or our intelligence services that are made from time to time, there is always the danger that a tiny minority of the legal profession will create something of an industry in pursuing them to the point of a long and difficult inquiry such as this? Will he ask our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice to take the matter up with the leaders of the judiciary and the leaders of the profession, who I am sure will agree with him that there is a danger that needs to be tackled?

[Michael Fallon]

As I have already emphasised, when there are allegations they need to be investigated and when there are failings they need to be put right, but what has emerged very clearly from the report is that all those serious allegations had no foundation whatever. My right hon. and learned Friend has made the constructive suggestion that we should discuss not just with my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary but with the leaders of the profession how we can curtail some of the abuse and cost involved. His point is all the more powerful given that he is a member of that profession; it is good to hear such a suggestion from the profession itself.