Oral Answers to Questions
Roger Mullin Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Lancaster
We have always made it clear that there is no place for sexual offending in the armed forces. However, following concerns raised in this House I have decided to bring before Parliament draft legislation to add the offences of sexual assault, voyeurism and exposure to schedule 2 of the Armed Forces Act 2006. I will write to those who have previously raised such concerns shortly.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
Harriett Baldwin
I will look into the matter the hon. Gentleman raises and write to him.
Defence Estate
Roger Mullin Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Michael Fallon
I understand my hon. Friend’s disappointment, and I appreciate the role that 40 Commando has played in her constituency. The disposal date is 2028. I emphasise to her that this is another decision that has been taken on military advice, on the advice of the Royal Marines themselves, so that they will be clustered in the Devonport area rather than spread out over a series of locations. There is plenty of time—another 12 years—for us to plan this departure and get it right.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
In the interests of clarity, will the Secretary of State name the eight sites in Scotland that are to be released, and will he indicate the extent of the consultation that will take place?
Sir Michael Fallon
While I am looking up the eight sites, I can certainly emphasise that consultation will take place, and that is the point of publishing this strategy document today. It will release these sites for detailed consultation with the local authorities concerned and, indeed, with the Scottish Government where relevant.
The sites to be disposed of in Scotland are Craigiehall, which has already been announced; Condor airfield near Arbroath; MOD Caledonia in Edinburgh; Redford cavalry barracks; Redford infantry barracks; DSG Forthside and Meadowforth barracks at Forthside, Stirling; Fort George, in the highlands; and Glencorse barracks.
Report of the Iraq Inquiry
Roger Mullin Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
It has been a great pleasure—privilege might be a better word—to sit through the entirety of the debate today and much of yesterday’s debate. In particular, it has been a privilege to listen to those hon. Members who have been here since 2003 or, in many cases, before, during the lead up to the Iraq conflict. One thing I have noticed about the contributions from people who have been here for that length of time is how some of the emotions are still raw. Members on both sides of House still feel strongly about the way they were led into voting for the conflict or how they had to delve around to find the truth before deciding how to vote.
Any reasonable reading of the Chilcot report would conclude that this Parliament was never at any stage given the whole, unalloyed truth about what was in preparation. Indeed, as I was listening to many of the contributions today, including those of the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), and of the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), I wrote down a few words to try to summarise some of their points. What I have written down is that the then Prime Minister did not seem to allow the evidence, analysis or expert opinion to get in the way of his intuition or pre-chosen narrative. For me, that is at the centre of the issue—the attempt to deny the exposure of the truth of the matter, as known at the time.
As this House knows, a total of 179 British service personnel were killed in the Iraq conflict. It is less well known that, according to the Ministry of Defence, there were a total of 5,970 casualties, including deaths, up to July 2009. I pay tribute to the courage of those people and hope, above all, that we do right for those left with utterly appalling physical and mental injuries that they continue to endure.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
I speak as the wife of a former member of our armed forces personnel. Does my hon. Friend agree that justice and acknowledgment are particularly important for the families? Locally, we grieve Guardsman Stephen Fergusson of the 1st Battalion the Scots Guards, who lost his life aged 31. I pay special tribute to him.
Roger Mullin
I thank my hon. Friend very much for that intervention. I am sure we all wish to pay tribute to the constituent she named.
People living with the consequences—those appalling injuries—need our support and care, but they also deserve justice and the truth. Over the past few days, I have heard one or two Members wonder whether it would be a waste of time to hold the former Prime Minister to account. I would answer that by asking, is justice ever a waste of time? I think not.
I was not a Member in 2003. Like some, I opposed the war at the time, but many people supported it. I have not had time to read the whole report—I have not been to a good enough speed-reading course to accomplish that—but I have attempted to focus on a few issues that I am particularly interested in, not least because I chair the all-party group on explosive weapons, and I am interested in some of the consequences of conflict and in issues such as reconstruction and preparedness for the aftermath of war.
We now know that, as UK troops poured into Iraq on 20 March 2003, the ill-conceived hope in Whitehall was of a quick victory over Saddam Hussein’s regime, followed by a relatively benign security environment, which of course never existed. Victory in the immediate conflict unleashed a vicious insurgency that some have estimated claimed 250,000 lives or more. That should not have been a surprise. As Chilcot argues, UK hopes were exposed as hopelessly vague, under-resourced and compounded by a complete Government planning failure. Indeed, the report finds that the UK Government’s plans were “wholly inadequate”.
For that failing, Sir John Chilcot laid particular criticism at the door of Tony Blair, and stated:
“He did not ensure that there was a flexible, realistic and fully resourced plan that integrated UK military and civilian contributions, and addressed the known risks.”
Before the troops rolled in on February 2003, the Joint Intelligence Committee—the overarching body that brought together the work of agencies such as MI6 and GCHQ— concluded:
“The broader threat from Islamist terrorists will also increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.”
A little over two years later, London would become the target of the 7/7 attacks, yet there has been reluctance in some quarters to accept any link between that and the invasion of Iraq, despite the intelligence that was given years earlier.
Before becoming an MP, I worked in places that had suffered from earlier conflict, albeit not to the same extent as Iraq. There is absolutely no shortage of historical information to show that severe conflicts throw up not merely economic, infrastructure and security challenges, but cultural challenges, which are sometimes seen in the strengthening of sectarian attachments of many sorts. Sir John found that the UK Government had completely failed to appreciate the
“magnitude of the task of stabilising, administering and reconstructing Iraq.”
He commented:
“The scale of the UK effort in post-conflict Iraq never matched the scale of the challenge. Whitehall Departments and their Ministers failed to put collective weight behind the task.”
What may have begun as a failure of leadership by a few had become a collective failure of the entire Government. It has become clear that there was one central strand to UK strategy post-conflict, which was to leave Iraq as soon as possible. As Sir John put it,
“In practice, the UK’s most consistent strategic objective in relation to Iraq was to reduce the level of its deployed forces.”
The report found that the Government failed to protect their own troops with appropriate kit and vehicles, as my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) explained a short time ago. Sir John stated that the Government failed to act against known dangers faced by our troops, such as the use of IEDs, and he castigated the MOD at the time for failing to apply appropriate armed vehicles with the appropriate haste. He argued that the troops
“did not have sufficient resources”
to conduct simultaneous long-term operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2006 onwards.
On Monday this week, I was in discussions with senior staff at Imperial College’s centre for blast injury studies. I was surprised to learn that as far back as the 1970s and the Rhodesian conflict, as it was known at the time, reports and studies demonstrated to the MOD what it needed to do to upgrade and provide better equipment for armed personnel in such conflicts. At that time, the lessons were ignored. This time, the lessons from Chilcot must not be ignored.
Dr Julian Lewis
The hon. Gentleman is making a most interesting speech. Before he leaves his list of failures, may I remind him of a point I raised in July 2003? Another failure is that, 13 days after the fall of Baghdad, it was still possible for journalists to go into the gutted headquarters of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry and intelligence services and pick up classified documents that were available for anyone to take away. One would have thought that if someone was determined to find out about the truth on WMDs and other matters, those ministries and agency headquarters should have been the first targets to be searched by intelligence teams.
Roger Mullin
The right hon. Gentleman makes a wonderfully telling point. I like his use of one word in particular: “if”. If they had been interested in finding out the truth about WMDs, these things would have been found much earlier and taken care of much earlier. The fact that there was no planning to do that tells its own tale, I fear.
Returning to my opening points about the people still alive today who suffered terrible injuries in the conflict, I would like to end, with your permission, Mr Speaker, with a quote from The BMJ only two days ago:
“No matter how good the short term care, nothing will remove the enduring effects of the deaths and the physical and psychological injuries. The true legacy of the conflict for individuals and wider society in both the UK and Iraq may not be evident for many years to come.”
That is why we need to learn all the lessons that have to be learned. We need to hold those to account who deserve to be held to account.
Mr Graham Allen
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Would it be in order to put on the record Members’ thanks for the fact that you have sat through this debate from the very beginning for the whole two days? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] It has been much appreciated by Members on all sides of the House.
Counter-Daesh Quarterly Update
Roger Mullin Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Fallon
Yes. We have made it clear that we are not planning any kind of combat role either for our troops or for the RAF in Libya. That is not part of our planning. If we were considering further military action against Daesh wherever they are—whether in Libya or anywhere else—we would of course come to this House to discuss it first.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
A recent report, “Why Young Syrians Choose to Fight”, argues that money acts as a key recruiter for Daesh, claiming that while the Syrian army pays around $100 a month, often late, Daesh can pay three times that amount on time. What alternative economic options for young Syrians are therefore being used to undermine Daesh’s recruitment?
Michael Fallon
The first thing is to undermine Daesh’s own access to revenue and finance. There is some evidence that we are beginning to do that and to reduce its earnings from oil and other trades. There is also some evidence—anecdotal, perhaps, but an accumulating body of evidence—that its pay rates to fighters are being reduced. Beyond that, we have to get the Syrian economy going again. The sooner we get a political settlement, the sooner we can get in the money that we and a lot of other countries pledged during the London conference. The money is ready and waiting to rebuild the Syrian economy and, most importantly, to give the young people of Syria a reason to stay in Syria and build a new society that is safe and secure for their future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Roger Mullin Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mark Lancaster
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who has been one of the campaigners ensuring that this change has come forward. He is absolutely right to make that point. I emphasise to the House that this is very much an option and I will ensure that when recipients are notified they are fully informed about what the options actually mean.
Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)
8. When he expects work to deal with radiation contamination at Dalgety Bay to be completed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)
The Ministry of Defence has been actively undertaking site monitoring and removal since 2011. We are keen to move to the next stage of investigation when the other three parties involved agree to site access. Discussions around that have already taken place and it is anticipated that an agreement will be signed shortly. We will continue to work closely with all parties to ensure that the matter is resolved as quickly as possible.
Roger Mullin
After 26 years, this non-action is just not good enough. In recent weeks, Defence Infrastructure Organisation officials have cancelled meetings with landowners to discuss access arrangements, have failed to turn up to meetings with local elected officials, and are treating the local community with contempt. When I meet the Minister on Wednesday, I hope I can get a detailed timeline for when action will be taken.
Mark Lancaster
I do not entirely accept what the hon. Gentleman says. My understanding is that we have been making positive progress, and that action has been taken through monitoring and removal on the beach since 2011. I am absolutely clear what the MOD’s responsibilities are in this matter. I look forward to meeting the hon. Gentleman later this week. I hope we can have a constructive approach to moving this issue forward.