UK Armed Forces in Iraq

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer given to the Urgent Question asked in the other place earlier today. The thrust of the Answer appears to be that the headlines in yesterday’s papers—in the Sunday Times, the Sunday Telegraph, the Mail on Sunday and the Sun, for example—which said that hundreds of British troops are going back to Iraq are wrong. Are the Government saying to us that these headlines, which appeared in a number of newspapers close to the Government, have just been made up, and have not come as a result of comments made by an inside source, whether injudiciously or otherwise?

The Secretary of State for Defence was quoted as confirming that our Armed Forces would be deployed to four separate sites in Iraq next month to train Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers, and that the training we are going to be offering in January will be in infantry skills and some of the basics, particularly on how to deal with IEDs. The Ministry of Defence has been quoted as saying that decisions on numbers, units or locations have not been made. How long will it be before decisions are made on this issue of providing further training? This will also show just how accurate or otherwise the apparently speculative leaks in yesterday’s newspaper reports were. Bearing in mind what the Government have said about not involving combat troops, what will be the size and composition of the force protection element of the training mission? What is the nature of the requests for further help that have come from the Iraqi Government?

We have supported steps taken by the Government, regional partners and the international coalition in combating ISIL. Do the Government not accept that rather greater clarity is now needed about the role of our Armed Forces in Iraq, the scale of their involvement, and the timeframe of training operations? Would they agree that the public, our Armed Forces and Parliament are entitled to be told about this directly by the Government, rather than via what appears to be a leak—from whatever source—to the media?