Afghanistan

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his remarks. I should have said in relation to force protection that the transition from company-level to battalion-level and then to brigade-level mentoring and advising will make the force protection challenge much easier by reducing the daily footprint of contact with Afghan forces and the Afghan population. We intend to recuperate to the UK large amounts of equipment, as we are planning to use much of it in the construction of our future Army plans, Future Force 2020, but we will, of course, ensure that any equipment that is not required back in the UK is either properly and formally gifted to the Afghan national security forces or the militaries of friendly neighbouring countries, or is appropriately destroyed.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Out of which budget will the cost of repatriating and reintegrating equipment come? Will it come out of the £160-billion core equipment budget?

[Mr Hammond]

That is a good question. Our arrangements with the Treasury are that equipment that has been purchased as urgent operational requirements from the special reserve may be repatriated into core without any charge to the defence budget, but the cost of physically recuperating that equipment will be met from the core defence budget. In respect of armoured vehicles that have been purchased as UORs, therefore, the Army will have to decide whether it is cost-effective to bring that equipment back and overhaul and re-equip it for future service, or whether it is more appropriate to abandon it and devote the money saved to purchase new equipment.