Afghanistan

Owen Paterson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

I rise to speak in this Chamber for the first time since my wife’s suicide in June last year. I would like to personally thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and many other right hon. and hon. Members from right around the House for the tremendous messages of support and condolence that you have sent me.

It is with no great pleasure that I stand to speak at the time of the UK’s biggest humiliation since Suez and of the US’s biggest humiliation since Saigon. The mood of the House is so different. I remember when the Taliban were evicted. The Labour Government went in with all-party support—apart from some very prescient comments by people such as the late Sir Peter Tapsell, the then Member for Louth and Horncastle—because we believed in nation building and in keeping terrorists at arm’s length and a very long way away from our streets after 9/11. There was then a period of very intense military activity, but we ended up with a muddled, messy Afghanisation in recent years.

The Afghan army has fought incredibly bravely—70,000 of them died—supported by us and the Americans technically from the air. President Biden drew a completely false choice. The choice was not between total immersion of American forces and the loss of American lives, which was going to do damage in the mid-terms, and pulling out. He could have carried on with 4,500 American troops and sophisticated air support. That would have sent a message to every Afghan army unit that if they were in trouble, they could call for American support. When it was announced that they were going, that sent a real message to the Taliban: “You’re safe, boys. Take every village and take every town, because the American air force is not coming after you.”

It is frankly shameful that the President of the United States—the leader of the free world—cannot face questions from his own hostile press corps but attacks the Afghan army for cowardice. We are now in a mess. China, Russia and Iran are hostile. What are we going to say to citizens in Taiwan, India, Pakistan and western Ukraine? They will all be worried.

The UK has a real role to play. Our recent review was worthless. We now have to cope with a weak American President, and, as the Prime Minister said this morning, the UK, leading the G7, has to step up. We have to review the review. We have to consider how we handle this.

In the short time I have left, I pay tribute to our armed forces. I am very proud to represent the 1 Royal Irish Regiment, based in Tern Hill in my constituency. I also saw them when I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) mentioned those funerals—I was there for three of them. Those veterans are very proud of what they did, and we should remember what they did: they brought women’s rights, and a concrete building in southern Afghanistan was turned from an ammunition dump into a girls’ school. We should remember them and we should remember the pressures they are under now.

These images will be shocking for those veterans. Combat Stress has had a doubling of applications for help in the last few days—it already looks after 15,000 to 16,000. We can all help: the Government can help through the NHS, the MOD contributes 25% of its funds, and every one of us—every constituent—can help Combat Stress now.

This is in our hands. I entirely endorse the comments about interpreters and getting other people out, but these are our citizens. Every time they look at the screen, the horrors of their experience in Afghanistan will come back. We owe it to those veterans now to go out and look after them.