Julian Lewis
Main Page: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)Department Debates - View all Julian Lewis's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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I think the House will endorse that. The right hon. Lady knows as much about Iraq, in particular about the Kurdish areas, as anybody in this House. There are lessons on the type of aid that was given and what we can do now to help the new democratically elected Government in Iraq to build on some of the earlier support we offered. On whether there should be a debate on Iraq, that is not a matter for me. However, I look forward to my appearance before the Select Committee later this week.
When insurgents such as ISIL break cover and seize and hold territory, they lose the advantages of secrecy and surprise. It should therefore not be too difficult in the short to medium term to expel them, but then they will go back to guerrilla and terror tactics. Will the Government have in place a medium to long-term strategy for containing that sort of warfare? We have lacked such a strategy in the past when we oscillated between nation building at one extreme and doing little or nothing at the other.
The tactics of ISIL vary and there is some evidence that it is already altering its tactics in the face of air strikes. The overall strategy has to be led and endorsed by the Government of Iraq. It is very important that, in the end, the campaign is led by the home-grown army of Iraqi and Kurdish forces, with the support of the international coalition. The strategy has to be formulated there rather than here, but we can offer specialist expertise.