Afghanistan: Inquiry

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I commend the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) for that tremendous tour de force of what has happened over the last few years. I want to comment on some of the aspects that should be brought out in the inquiry, and to share with the House several other thoughts.

The sort of things that I would like to know are these. Others have asked before me, but I need to know: did the Prime Minister know what President Biden was planning before the withdrawal of American forces was announced? If so, was a risk assessment carried out? Only last month, there was a meeting of global leaders about Afghanistan. Macron was there, Merkel was there, Biden was there and Mr Trudeau was there, but the Prime Minister was not. I regard that as unfortunate. As the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East indicated, in so many ways, as the catastrophe unfolded after we withdrew, it was absolutely predictable what would happen. Did the Prime Minister think the same at the time? I wonder.

I want to put on the record my and my party’s thanks, and I am sure those of everyone in the Chamber, for the sterling efforts made by the Secretary of State for Defence to secure evacuation of British and Afghan workers and civilians. I have personal cause to be grateful to the Secretary of State, but it seemed that No. 10 did not move to ensure some sort of EU involvement in Afghanistan to help secure that work after the US withdrew. I have touched before in this place on the actions of the then Foreign Secretary. I expressed my concern then and I will leave it at that.

Aside from an inquiry, one side point I want to make is that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) has been calling for a corridor to get refugees out. There has not been so much talk of it of late in the press, but I fully support that, as I am sure we all do. I have friends who served in the armed forces who are still trying to get interpreters out. Good work has been done. I put on record my thanks for a second time to the Secretary of State for Defence, as well as to other Government Members who have been very helpful in securing people’s safety, but there is work to be done. We must not lose sight of the need for a safe corridor.

The scope of the inquiry has to be very wide. I utterly endorse what the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East said about the recent Budget. It was a tax and spend Budget—one with extra money. The 1.4% cut in defence spending over the next four years is deeply worrying. Several times I have expressed my concern at the cut in the size of the British Army. Perhaps the cut has ramifications for the other services as well—I know not. One thing I would like to see from the inquiry is an investigation into what assessment, prior or immediately prior to the intervention in 2001, was made of the military’s capability to intervene and maintain our defences at the level required. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) and I have mentioned that point several times. There are states out there, for example China, that are not there for the good of the United Kingdom. What assessment was made into whether we could do that?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of what was done—the inquiry will bring that out—where does it leave our standing as a military power, which I have just touched on with regard to the defence cuts, and as a soft power in the world? We are incredibly lucky that English is one of the great languages of the world. That, via our media—the BBC and so much else—gives us soft power that we can use. On a lighter note, it is astonishing how many people around the world watch “The Crown” of all things, but that demonstrates what we can do as a country. We lose that soft power at our very, very great peril.

The Government’s decisions, as the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East said, were too hasty. Yes, they were brought about in part by an American President and the candidate to succeed him, but things could have been done so much better and they were not. What does that leave, in terms of what is happening in Afghanistan? I shall rest that point there.

I want to end with an anecdote I always remember. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was a Member of another place. I do not mean the other place next door to here—that day will never happen—but that I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament. In 2009, the NATO conference took place in Edinburgh. In previous years, I had got to know the then Russian consul general in Edinburgh, Vladimir Malygin. One day his office called me to say, “The NATO conference is on. We have two serving Russian major generals in civvies who are observers at the conference and they would like to look around the Scottish Parliament. Could you organise it? Could you make it happen?” So we showed the two Russian generals, plus an interpreter, around the Scottish Parliament. The generals were taciturn individuals, but when we had finished the tour, I said, “Would you like a glass of whisky?” and they cheered up greatly at that prospect. What I will never forget is that while they were enjoying a drop of Scotland’s finest, they suddenly said to me, “What on earth are you doing in Afghanistan?” This was in 2009, eight years after we went in. One of them said, “I lost three of my best friends there. One was horribly mutilated.” That question—what were we doing there—has always stayed with me.

There is a space for the United Kingdom to do good in the world, provided we work out why we are doing it and, as the right hon. Member said, what our aim is. People in the armed forces I talk to say, “Identify your aim and be sure of it”. I will leave my comments there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I believe that the Defence Committee has started its investigation, and we on the Foreign Affairs Committee have started ours. Parliament has a role to play in doing its job and scrutinising what Government have and have not done, and making recommendations for the future. That is right and proper, but he rightly asks for something above that that can do the necessary job. I get entirely why Chilcot provides a rather unhelpful shadow over this discussion, but it cannot be used as an excuse to shrug off what the right hon. Gentleman asks us to do. This is up to the Government and up to us all. What we have shown through the lack of hon. Members’ presence in this debate is that Parliament cannot be left as the only institution to scrutinise the matter.

[Jamie Stone]

The hon. Member is making a most excellent speech. The point made by the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) was that, whatever the rights and wrongs, this place will sadly, from time to time, have to commit people to defend or fight, and the whole of the decision making from the Government or this place will be compromised and corroded unless we have a full inquiry that gets everything out in the open and that we learn from. I hope that this is a low point from which we rise again one day.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Indeed. Can the hon. Gentleman imagine what a slap in the face it will be to those who put on the uniform so bravely—for whom we wear the poppy at this time of year—if we do not take the time to learn lessons, as the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said we would be expected to after such an enormous military campaign?

Is this a low point or a point of no return? I hope that the Minister will tell us this afternoon that it is a low point from which we will learn—

[Jamie Stone]

A turning point.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

And turn—and even if the hon. Gentleman suggests that we rise again, I suggest that this should perhaps be something from which we learn and get to what we really need, which is the reinvigoration and assessment of what the liberal international order is actually for and how it will lead to change, as it is being contested and challenged like never before.