Afghanistan

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I can tell the noble and gallant Lord that we will continue to support and train Afghan institutions, including the national police and the national army, and strengthen their ability and the ability of the defence and security forces to counter security threats. That and other capacity-building work is aimed at increasing the self-reliance of Afghan forces in the fight against terrorism. We will continue to work shoulder to shoulder with them.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I am someone who thought it absolutely right to go in to remove al-Qaeda in 2001 and who has always been a passionate supporter of the potential for humanitarian military intervention, but we have to acknowledge that this has not gone as well as we hoped. Why are the Government so reluctant to set up an objective inquiry into lessons learned from the Afghan experience of the last 20 years? It has been a tremendous cost, in human blood, disablement and treasure. We owe it to the people who have suffered to examine this question very deeply.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, and I hope I can reassure him by saying that there have been reviews. After the conclusion of Operation Herrick in 2014, there was a thorough internal review. As he will know, some of the further lessons that have been learned have played a key role in helping to shape our integrated review, so I do not think it is fair to say that no lessons have been learned. However, he is right that we are not at this point minded to consider a Chilcot-style public inquiry. We are not convinced that the benefits would outweigh it, and we are concerned that such an inquiry could take far longer and be far more expensive than Chilcot, which itself took seven years and cost more than £13 million. The relevant time period in Afghanistan was twice as long. However, I reassure the noble Lord that we have learned lessons and continue to do so. We will continue to use the integrated review to follow them through.