Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

As I have said, about 11,000 Iraqi forces personnel have been trained in the past few months. The British Army has made a formidable contribution to that training and is now extending the training it offers to the training bases outside the Kurdish areas. We need to continue to do that. The Iraqi army has to be reconstituted. It has been weakly led and has been slowed up, particularly by improvised explosive devices in vehicles and by booby traps left behind in abandoned villages. The British Army can make a real contribution with the training we offer and the operational expertise we developed in Afghanistan, but it will be slow work.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend rightly spoke of the importance of aerial surveillance in gathering a picture of what is happening on the ground, but he will be aware of informed speculation on both sides of the Atlantic that we were to an extent blindsided by lack of HUMINT—human intelligence—on the fall of Mosul and, a year later, Ramadi. What confidence can we have that the necessary assets are in place to build up an optimal picture of 21st-century jihadism?

[Michael Fallon]

I do not think that my hon. Friend or the House would expect me to go into too much detail about how we gather intelligence in either Iraq or Syria, except to say that 30% of the intelligence-gathering effort is done by British aircraft. We need to build up a more accurate picture of ISIL’s strengths up the Tigris and west along the Euphrates before we can assist the Iraqi and Kurdish forces to retake the ground that has been lost. That advice, and train and equip, is all part of the mission to help bolster Iraqi forces.