Algeria

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We plan for strategic defence and security reviews every five years, so this is a rolling programme where we permanently look at whether, given the threats that we face around the world, we have the right defence and security assets to deal with them. The decisions that we took in the last SDSR—in which we were bringing the defence budget back into balance, reducing the number of main battle tanks and looking at smaller, more flexible armed forces, but were putting money into ISTAR, drones and surveillance, into special forces and into cyber-security, making sure that we protected the key intelligence and security functions—were the right decisions. If anything, if we had the review over again, we would go more in that direction. All the evidence shows that these are the emerging problems that we are going to be dealing with more in the future.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

May I commend the Prime Minister on his leadership during this crisis and on keeping the House updated? My right hon. Friend mentioned an intelligent mix of assets. I wonder whether the 12,000 Algerians in the United Kingdom and 4,000 Mali nationals might be part of that intelligent approach, by deploying them in a positive way back to their own country in a developmental role and in a role that shows leadership within their country.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that in drawing up our national security strategy, we should be listening to the settled communities here in the UK that have a huge amount of knowledge and expertise about the countries that may be causing us concern. That is very much the case with the Somali community, and I am sure the points that he makes about the Algerian community are right, too.