Daesh: Syria/Iraq

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Maybe I missed something in my hon. Friend’s question. The simple answer is that it is because they are in Syria and until 14 days ago we were not authorised to strike at targets in Syria. A crucial part of our argument was that we needed to take the fight to Daesh in Syria—its command and control headquarters, its supply lines and its sources of economic support.

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

In the debate just two weeks ago we were told that Daesh in Raqqa represented the head of the snake, and that Daesh posed a real and imminent threat to the security of the United Kingdom. Given that, can the Foreign Secretary tell us what action has been taken by the RAF to diminish Daesh in Raqqa? If no action has been taken by the RAF in Raqqa, why not?

[Mr Hammond]

As I made clear earlier, I cannot talk about individual targets and individual attacks. The hon. Gentleman is right. That focus in the debate was on the command and control headquarters in Raqqa and that has to be the target if we are to destroy Daesh, but we have to go about that deliberately. Rushing to strike Daesh in its headquarters is not necessarily the best way to go about the task. I am not a military strategist and I do not think it would be sensible for politicians, least of all in open session, to try to set the military plan. What I do know is that targeting the leadership of Daesh in a heavily populated city such as Raqqa will require extremely careful planning, the acquisition of a great deal of intelligence and surveillance data, and the proper analysis of those data.