Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Flynn and Julian Brazier

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

We recruited nearly 7,000 reservists across the three services last year. That was a rise of 65%, and the rise was even greater within the Army Reserve. As for my hon. Friend’s reference to superannuated reservists, I visited 3 Royal Welsh last weekend, and the average age of that battalion has dropped from 41 to 31 over the past three years.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

12. If he will establish an inquiry into UK armed forces operations in Helmand province in 2006.

Reserve Recruitment

Debate between Paul Flynn and Julian Brazier

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

I do not believe that that has had a direct effect. Most reservists join initially through their local reserve unit or, in some cases, through the national website. There was one immediate indirect effect—while all the glitches were in the system, which we have ironed out over the past few months, the lack of somebody immediately available on the high street to mentor somebody who had not already got dug in with a unit made a significant difference. I do not believe it will make a long-term difference.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Being the fourth highest spender on defence in the world has led to the deaths of 632 of our brave British soldiers in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction and in Helmand in the belief that not a shot would be fired. Why cannot we pursue an independent foreign policy and recognise that spending above our budgets and trying to punch above our weight always results in dying beyond our responsibilities?

[Mr Brazier]

I am not sure how that fits into the statement, but I am very happy to comment. The fact is that we should be proud of what we have achieved in Helmand province. That operation started, as did the previous one, under a Labour Government.

UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Debate between Paul Flynn and Julian Brazier

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Paul Flynn]

No, I am certainly not, and the hon. Gentleman is right in what he says. Minister after Minister has said, “We are going to tackle corruption; the corruption is impossible and we must do something about it.” When we ask them what we must do, nobody has the slightest idea. What we are doing, and what we are trying to do, is fight corruption with our sort of ethical corruption; we have taken corruption and bribery and put it on an industrial scale. The Americans are moving in with pallets piled high with bubble-wrapped stacks of $100 bills; our way of working in Afghanistan is based on our own variety of corruption.

Afghanistan is a country where there is not going to be a happy ending. We are never going to get the tribal groups to work together and we are not going to get the warlords to behave reasonably. These warlords have committed atrocities and they now have their members sitting in the Afghan Parliament. We went in with this idea that there was a simple solution, possibly a military one, but we know that that is not possible.

On the question raised by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), may I say that although we praise the bravery of the troops and weep for their sacrifices, especially in respect of those who receive little attention—those who have been maimed in battle and will suffer the wounds for the rest of their lives—that is no excuse for saying that as so many have been killed, more should be killed to justify those deaths? Those deaths were avoidable and the fact that this House did not oppose the expedition into Helmand province in 2006 is responsible for them; this is not down to anybody else. We should have said at that time that it was not plausible to suggest that we can go into Helmand—that is so for the very reasons that the Afghans say. They are fighting us because we are the ferengi: we are foreigners. Every generation of Afghans has fought against foreigners.

In 2001, a member of the Russian Duma slapped me on the back and said, “Oh, you Brits have succeeded in capturing Afghanistan, very clever. We did it in six days and we were there for 10 years. We spent billions and billions of roubles, we killed 1 million Afghans and we lost 16,000 of our soldiers. When we ran out, there were 300,000 mujaheddin in the hills ready to take over, just waiting their turn. It will happen to you.” It has happened throughout history; no army has gone into Afghanistan, conquered it and occupied it. The task is impossible.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Flynn]

No, I cannot, because I have given way twice.

If we want evidence that the Government are in denial, we should recall the attempt to stop the reading of the names at Prime Minister’s Question Time, when the House is well attended and the media attention is on us. This was shifted and the names were read twice, once on a Monday and once on a Thursday. When the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary visited Afghanistan to demonstrate our strength, they proved our weakness. When they came back to the Dispatch Box and gave their reports to the House, they did not mention the only important thing that happened on their mission, which was that they were unable to fulfil their engagements. They were supposed to visit three sites, but they were unable to visit the principal one because of the strength of the Taliban. However, to admit that, and thus to tell the truth at the Dispatch Box about the fact that their trip exposed our vulnerability and our inability to guarantee the safety of our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, would have been to admit that the situation is getting worse by the day. This has been going on for a long time, and to pretend otherwise is nonsense.

There is a welcome sense within this House—I am not making any point about a date on which to withdraw—that we know that we are going to withdraw. An exit strategy is in place and that changes the mindset. Nobody will talk any longer about continuing for 30 years, or about conquering the Taliban or the people of Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan know that we are getting out. The Parliaments in Holland and Canada debated this issue—they had the opportunity to do so and to vote on it before we did—and they decided to bring their troops out. The opinion of our nation is the same: 70% of the country wants to see the troops home by Christmas. That cannot happen, but we need to get them home in a way that is going to guarantee as much peace as possible for the Afghans in the future. We have to choose whether we have a Dien Bien Phu exit or a Saigon exit—that was an exit prompted by the disgust of the population at the body bags coming home. Such an exit would be carried out in panic and would leave the Afghans at the greatest possible peril. We may be able to reach some agreement with these various groups. They are not saints and it will be very difficult to get any stable set-up, but that must happen and we know that we are going to do it in the near future—