EU Council, Security and Middle East

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the case of the Yazidi people, who are being persecuted by these dreadful, barbaric thugs from ISIL. We have helped directly by funding some of the refugee camps and making sure that they are properly built and prepared in northern Iraq. We were also prepared, over the summer, to take part if necessary in a huge humanitarian airlift operation, which was ready to go when those people were stuck on Mount Sinjar. Fundamentally, the best way to help the Yazidi people will be to ensure that there is an Iraqi Government who are able to confront ISIL and to restore to that country a sense that minorities are to be looked after and not persecuted.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Today is the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Anglian Regiment. At that time, it had four regular battalions and three territorial ones. Now, it has only two regular battalions and just one reserve battalion. Does the Prime Minister accept that, in an increasingly dangerous world, both here and overseas, it is not in Britain’s defence interests to cut the size of the British Army to what it was at the time of Waterloo 200 years ago?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend, for this reason: it is in Britain’s interests to make sure that we spend our £33 billion defence budget on the assets that we actually need when facing the conflicts that we face today. So we have state-of-the-art Tornadoes that are able to fly over Iraq and Syria to gather intelligence, and we have brand-new Rivet Joint aircraft that can do similar things. The investment in those platforms, and in the brand-new class of submarines that are able to do similar things, is absolutely vital for our country. Yes, there are difficult decisions involved in changing the size and laydown of our armed forces, but unless we make those decisions, we will not have the assets that we need in conflicts such as these.