Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much indeed for giving way, although he might not thank me now. Would it not have been easier to achieve the harmony guidelines if the Government had not cut four battalions from the infantry in 2004? In hindsight, was not that a bad decision? When will the Government address the under-recruitment and lack of retention that leads to the Royal Marines, for example, being 9.8 per cent. under-strength? Seven battalions in the infantry are 20 per cent. undermanned: the Scots Guards, 4 Scots, 2 Fusiliers, 2 and 3 Yorks, 1 Mercian and 40 Commando. If the Government addressed those problems, the pressure on individual infantry servicemen, who, due to that pressure, the Government now say are in a pinch-point trade, would not be so great.”
“On a separate point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not sure that the Leader of the House or the Government are aware of the points that you have made in your statement. Will you take all possible means to ensure that they understand the implications of what you have said, as we received advice from the Leader of the House, speaking at the Dispatch Box, on what we might discuss in this debate? Of course, you are the final arbiter of what we can discuss in any particular debate.”
“Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is now rather isolated on this issue.”
“May I inform the Minister that Essex county council carried out a wide-ranging consultation about the future of secondary education in Colchester? The resulting decision reflects a lot of opinions that were fed in, not least by those who wanted to keep education in the south of the town, near the garrison. There will be a vocational school there, with which the garrison will be invited to be involved. I am extremely grateful to the Minister’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), for receiving Lord Hanningfield, the leader of the county council, to discuss how the military might be more involved with Colchester’s schools than ever before, and particularly with the new vocational college. I fear that the hon.”
“Before my hon. Friend leaves the question of troops to teachers, I commend the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and the thrust of our party’s policy. May I convey my confidence that the MOD is taking up that challenge, and I hope that an example of that will be the co-operation that the MOD has already indicated that it will give to the new vocational college in Colchester?”
“Will the Secretary of State examine the role of community land trusts, and the possibility of genuinely community-led development, in relation to the provision of Gypsy and Traveller sites? In my constituency it is private developers who are currently submitting applications for development on those sites, and, although such development is entirely contrary to the wishes of the community and local people, it seems likely that the applications will be imposed on them by virtue of the regional assemblies that we thought we had got rid of in the referendum.”
“I supported the war, and I have not demurred from that decision. Nevertheless, the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) is very relevant. I arrived in Basra a few weeks after the invasion and was asked in Anglo-Saxon terms by the general officer commanding, “Where the hell is DFID?” There was no plan to capitalise on the first 100 days, and many of the bloody consequences that we have dealt with stem from that early failure of lack of planning. Will the Secretary of State admit that that is an issue that we should explore, not least because we need to learn some lessons for Afghanistan?”
“The failure was caused not by any lack of skill or courage on the part of our armed forces, but by a collapse of political courage on the part of the Government, and the inability of Ministers ever to come to terms with the size of the job that they had asked our soldiers to undertake.”
“Our withdrawal would be understandable if our mission were truly accomplished, as the Government claim—after all, Iraq is for the Iraqis and we have no strategic interest in maintaining security with our own troops in Basra indefinitely—but the awkward fact for the Government is that the moment the Union flag is lowered over the Basra air base, the stars and stripes will be hoisted in its place. Far from our mission being over, the Americans will have to fill the gaps left by our departure. The manner of our withdrawal is symptomatic of the Government’s dual failure in Iraq: it is both a tactical and a strategic defeat.”
“Thanks to its oilfields, southern Iraq is likely to develop into one of the richest areas in the region, as the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) pointed out. The UK has expended a great deal of blood and treasure in trying to ensure that sustainable and prosperous future for the south of Iraq, and yet at the very moment that one might actually call victory, the Government seem determined to snatch defeat from its jaws by withdrawing precipitately and leaving the long-term benefits of a strategic relationship entirely to the Americans.”
“That is of even greater relevance to our current difficulties in Afghanistan, and it is the need to learn the lessons from these mistakes, and to learn them quickly, that makes the case for a full public inquiry into Iraq so compelling. Unfortunately, when we consider the future strategic relationship between the United Kingdom and Iraq, we are left to ponder what might have been. The excellent mentoring role played by our armed forces in the south of Iraq, which Defence Committee members witnessed when we visited this year, last year and in previous years, could have created a platform for a sustainable and productive mil-mil—military on military—relationship between the British and Iraqi armies, and could have led to the kind of strategic relationship that our country has developed with, for instance, Oman.”
“British politicians and officials cannot escape their share of the blame for this. The failure in post-conflict planning, coupled with the fact that the Department for International Development is simply not engineered to cope with post-conflict reconstruction, meant that we wasted the vital first 100 days of hope after the invasion—that is the limited window that exists in a post-conflict situation. We should have been able to prove to the Iraqi people that the removal of Saddam Hussein would lead to improvements in their lives, but, tragically, we and the Americans missed that window. The lack in our case—in Regional Command (South)—of a single campaign plan and a single integrated command across the British military and civilian effort was fatal in that respect.”
“I remain convinced, as I was in 2003, that the removal of Saddam Hussein was the correct course of action. As history will record, the new Iraq that is at last emerging from the turmoil of the past six years demonstrates that the decision we took alongside the United States—and which was supported by almost 40 other nations—was the right one. Our soldiers, sailors and airmen have performed in Iraq with exemplary courage, skill and determination, and I salute them and honour those who have fallen and those who still suffer from their injuries. The failures in strategic planning for the aftermath of the war meant, however, that the struggle in Iraq has been much more prolonged and bloody than it needed to be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) pointed out.”
“While listening to the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor), I am afraid that I reflected that there were voices—informed people—who warned about the vacuum that existed immediately after the invasion. I myself prepared a paper for the shadow Cabinet at the time saying that all the ingredients for an insurgency war were in place. I had meetings with the Secretary of State at the time about it, and I remain grieved that nothing was done. When I complained on the Floor of the House that we were withdrawing our troops too quickly and that they were overstretched, I was accused of nitpicking. I did not need a crystal ball; many experienced military and other figures warned about the consequences of the vacuum that we had left, and I wish to address that in my comments.”
“It is good news that Iraq is improving and that our troops will be able to come home. At least they can hold their heads up high for their achievements, but they come back knowing—as we all know—that they have been let down at almost every step of their journey to and from Iraq.”
“We damaged our standing in the wider world by going in, even if it was the right thing to do, and damaged our relationship with the US by never having sufficient political will or military capacity to keep the promises we made to the Iraqi people and to our allies. The result is that we have taken much of the pain for none of the gain. Such is the opprobrium in which we are held by the Iraqi Government that French or German companies are winning far more contracts in Iraq than British companies. The Minister grimaces at that—I will give way to him if he would like to dispute it—but the fact is that French and German companies, alongside the Americans, are winning the lion’s share of the contracts. The Government are holding this debate because they think they finally have some good news from Iraq and they want to crow about it.”
“Enthusiasm for EU and UN initiatives is no substitute. Faith in international institutions is too often misplaced, as they all too often prove wholly ineffective. The Government continue to profess that the transatlantic alliance remains the cornerstone of British security policy, but with the election of possibly the least Atlanticist US presidency since before the second world war, and plenty of rivals for US attention elsewhere in the world, our relationship with the UK is now at its most vulnerable since the Vietnam war. That is the legacy of the Government’s failure in post-invasion Iraq.”
“Furthermore, there is a danger that if the British Government do not significantly increase their military and civilian reconstruction commitment in Helmand in a co-ordinated fashion in early 2009, the Americans will feel compelled to take over command of Regional Command (South) and will regard subsequent improvements in the security situation as attributable to their efforts, in contrast to the perceived British failures between 2006 and 2008. So stretched is the British Army at present that even with the draw-down from Iraq, it is likely that no significant increase of British forces in Helmand will be possible, so such a scenario may be one that we have to accept. The erosion of American confidence in the British military is the greatest strategic failure of UK foreign and defence policy for decades.”
“The result is a complete lack of strategic co-ordination between the civil and military efforts. If we ask the question, “Who is the Secretary of State for Afghanistan?”, the answer is that there is a Cabinet Committee that meets once a fortnight. We cannot conduct a war on the basis of a Cabinet Committee that meets once a fortnight. One of the things we should have understood from the tragedy of our experience in Iraq is that although we have excellent tactical effectiveness on the ground in Helmand and a brilliant campaign plan, we do not have a plan to win the war at grand strategic level. Until the Government grasp that point, we will simply be passengers in whatever the Americans decide to do.”
“The view in Washington is that we failed in southern Iraq and that is having serious repercussions on how the Americans view our contribution in Afghanistan and on our future role as their primary ally of choice. A report currently circulating in the Ministry of Defence reveals the serious doubts in Washington about the British performance in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to one British source, the report showed: “Britain’s military ability is no longer rated as highly as we thought it was.” The painful lessons of Iraq for the British have yet to be applied fully in Afghanistan. We are more effective at counter-insurgency than we were, but we still suffer a command chain divided between the MOD and DFID—a divide that stretches right to the heart of Government, and the further up the command chain, the more serious it is.”
“I choose to put a favourable face on that, which is that both sides are doing as much as they can to repair the damage and to restore confidence. I commend him for that. I am sure that he was not misleading the House, but our American partners would welcome some candid and open frankness about some of the shortcomings of our military effort and the political backing for that effort rather than a pretence that everything in the garden is lovely. Although the Americans under General Petraeus have revolutionised their approach to counter-insurgency warfare, our armed forces were never given the capacity to undertake truly effective COIN operations, and we were therefore unable to defeat the Mahdi army.”
“Prime Minister al-Maliki told The Times later that year that the “British military doctrine” may have been one of the reasons that prevented the spread of security. It is worth reflecting on the fact that had the British Army had the capacity and political backing to do the job that was necessary in Basra, Operation Charge of the Knights should never have been necessary. It was only necessary because we basically had to walk away and hand the city over to the Jaish al-Mahdi—JAM—militias. Although we can recover from that tactical setback relatively quickly, worse by far has been the effect on our relations with the Americans. I was a little surprised to hear the Secretary of State tell the House on Monday that relationships and confidence between the British and American militaries were as good as he claimed.”
“It is extraordinary to see the difference between what we were briefed in Basra and what we were briefed in Baghdad about the likely efficacy of the surge. Those events led to our strategic failure with both the Iraqi and American Governments. What General Petraeus’s chief counter-insurgency adviser described as the British “defeat in the field in southern Iraq” during 2006 led to our being sidelined by the Iraqi Government and the American military in Baghdad. The British contribution to the Iraqi army’s Operation Charge of the Knights in March and April 2008, which succeeded in driving the Mahdi army out of Basra, was severely limited by what we had available and by the political timidity of our own Government.”
“The mood of those deployed in Basra in 2007 was summed up by one Army captain, who told The Times: “We didn’t ask to come here…We are making incredible efforts and sacrifices. Yet sometimes it feels like our country and Government act like they wish we weren’t here at all.” I am glad that the Government appear to have learned the lessons from Basra and have made considerable efforts since to demonstrate public support for the armed forces, but the words of that captain should make every Minister hang his or her head in shame. Indeed, that is a lesson that we should take on across the whole House. The Government ran out of the political will and military capacity to do the job, which led to our tactical failure in southern Iraq. As the Americans surged into Iraq in the first half of 2007, the British Government were looking to get out.”
“Blair, when Prime Minister, was determined to hang on in Iraq to preserve our strategic relationship with the Americans, but I shall argue that our failure to provide the necessary military capacity has ended in materially damaging the very relationship that he most wanted to maintain. Most shameful was the Government’s attitude towards our troops still serving in Basra. Lacking the courage to try to explain their mission to the British public, Ministers continued to send our troops to Iraq in the knowledge that their mission lacked the support of the British people. Nothing can be more dispiriting to a soldier than knowing that the sacrifices that he and his comrades are making are not appreciated by those in whose name they are being made.”
“In the 21 months from the beginning of 2006 to the withdrawal from Basra palace in September 2007, British forces suffered 64 combat deaths, just under half of the 136 combat deaths sustained during the six years since operations began in 2003. Faced with an intensifying insurgency campaign in southern Iraq, the Government simply failed to provide the men and equipment necessary to have a chance of defeating the militants. Indeed, in late 2007, the Prime Minister came to the House and announced that there would be a further troop reduction in the following spring to below the 5,000 level that the Select Committee on Defence had been briefed was the bare minimum. Let us take a step back for a moment. Originally, Mr.”
“As the need for more troops in the politically “good” war in Afghanistan grew ever more urgent, the so-called “bad” war in Iraq became ever more embarrassing for the Government, and the number of troops in Operation Telic dwindled further to 7,200 in May 2006 and to just 5,500 in May 2007, shortly before the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, left office. That was one year before Operation Charge of the Knights. It might have been assumed that the steady reduction in the number of the British forces occurred because the situation in Iraq was improving, but everyone in the House knows that 2006 and 2007 were the bloodiest years of the war.”
“By May 2004, a year after the invasion, there were just 8,600 British troops in Iraq, compared with 18,000 a year before and 46,000 at the time of the invasion in March 2003. Even at those reduced levels in 2004-05, before the deployment to Helmand, our armed forces were still operating beyond the defence planning assumption set out in the 1998 strategic defence review. At the heart of the problem was the fact that the Government insisted that the budget for the armed forces was sufficient, although it was planned as a peacetime budget and we were fighting a considerable war. Our armed forces, as the Government had configured them in the 1998 strategic defence review, were not large enough for the task that the Government required of them in Iraq, and the situation deteriorated when we deployed in Helmand in 2006.”
“I do not know what discussions took place between the British and American Governments about that. I have no doubt that the promise was made, and I have no doubt that it was broken with the understanding of the Americans because it coincided with the commencement of our operations in Helmand province. My hon. Friend is right to point out another example of how we always promised more than we could deliver. At the heart of those failures was the fact that Ministers, and perhaps civil servants, never truly understood the nature of military tasking and the consequent burden that the armed forces would have to bear to follow through our commitments. From Operation Telic 2 onwards, the number of British troops in multinational zone south was never sufficient for the task in hand.”
“To assist the Minister, does he recall that the Iraq survey group report, which was produced after the invasion, showed that there were strong indications that Saddam Hussein had every intention of resuming his weapons of mass destruction programmes. He had shells with traces of chemical weapons in them and aircraft that were capable of spraying chemical weapons. Those weapons systems existed and were in direct breach of all the Security Council resolutions that had been passed against him.”
“To what extent do the Government hold Russia responsible for the state of human rights in Belarus? Is it not interesting that while Ukraine struggles for freedom and democracy, and has its gas supplies cut off, Belarus has free and easy gas supplies from Russia without any agreement whatever?”
“As the British Government reassess their strategy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan, alongside our American allies, will the Secretary of State comment on reports of an apparent fraying of relations between the British and American militaries? Will he take this opportunity to underline how important it is to our country that we should be able to offer the Americans effective military aid in support of their efforts, so that we remain as important to them as they are to us?”
“Does the Prime Minister agree that for all the terrible difficulties that have been faced in Iraq—not least by our own armed forces during our time there—history is likely to judge the removal of Saddam Hussein as the right thing to do and as a success, and that our armed forces will be seen to have played a decisive role in that? Does he understand, however, the sense of unease felt by many in the armed forces and others that we are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory? If now is the right time for the British to leave, why are the Americans taking over so much of the role that we are abandoning? Is it not just the case that we have run out of military capacity and political will, and that we are, in effect, being asked to leave because we cannot effectively contribute anything further with what we have available to us?”
“Will the Leader of the House give the House a categorical assurance that neither she nor any Minister, civil servant or adviser sought to influence the contents of Mr. Speaker’s statement that was delivered on the day of the state opening?”
“I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for so generously giving a little time in his debate so that I may comment. I am a promoter of option 5, which is, I accept, a late arrival in the debate; nevertheless, it may prove to be the most viable option. I am able to place on the record today for the first time that Mr. Jonathan Tippett, whom the hon. Gentleman prays in aid, has said to me, in terms, that the most crucial issue is to maintain education in the south of the town, and that if option 4—which I fear will not attract the investment to Colchester that we all want—is not possible, he would contemplate option 5 as a compromise solution. That option is for a military academy school somewhere in the south of the town that would have the ability especially to serve the Army families of the garrison as well as other children.”
“On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If a right hon. or hon. Member were going to make an attack of a personal nature on another right hon. or hon. Member, it would be in order for him to notify that Member in advance. No such notice has been given.”
“On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Does anything that has occurred in the House today affect your powers to refer complaints about breach of privilege to precedents and to a motion on the Floor of the House in the usual way?”
“Does the Prime Minister accept that there is widespread concern among the armed forces that there is dislocation between various Government Departments? I very much welcome his review, but will he say who is in charge of it; and will he put a Minister in charge of Afghanistan policy, to answer on the totality of that policy? I promise him that, at the moment, one gets very different perspectives from the different Departments involved on the challenges that we face in Afghanistan.”
“The right hon. Gentleman referred earlier to the Government’s consideration in the 2003 White Paper of the possibility of a Thames estuary airport. Does he accept that the Government did not consider those proposals with anything like the enthusiasm they are now showing for the Heathrow proposals, and that there has not been any serious consideration of a Thames estuary proposal since the Roskill commission in the early 1970s? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me the name of the engineering consultancy employed by the Government to consider those proposals, for example?”
“I have no criticism to make of BAA for lobbying as hard as it can to get its way, because that is the process, but is it not extraordinary that the Department for Transport appears to have been manipulated in the way that it has? Is it not even more extraordinary that, while my hon. Friend has read out those statistics and an account of how the data were manipulated to get that result, the Secretary of State has sat there on the Front Bench and not contested a single word that she has said?”
“That will be to the benefit of this country and, I believe, the whole of Europe.”
“He will not even see the first sod of earth turned on this new project, which is miles down the track. This is a pre-election exercise. My goodness, if Boris Johnson’s proposal was window-dressing, what is this in comparison? I doubt that it will happen. Once the nail has finally been driven through the heart of this proposal and once it becomes clear that constraints on the expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted are fixed by public opinion, which does not want airport capacity so close to where people live, the proposal for a Thames estuary airport so ably floated by the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich—and, perhaps not so ably, but just as vehemently by me—will move rapidly up the agenda as the only viable alternative, providing a real hub international airport to the east of London.”
“What we have heard in tonight’s debate is enough to confirm that the third runway at Heathrow will never happen. We have heard about the falsification of evidence designed to get the project to comply with already crumbling environmental requirements, which shows that this is nothing more than the Government parading their pro-business credentials in a very aggressive way to curry favour with certain quarters in the business community. This project will never happen. I see the Secretary of State in his place; he must be regretting the tone he struck in his most unfortunate speech earlier this afternoon. He must be thinking that he will not be here to see this third runway opening; he will not be where he is sitting today and he will not have the responsibilities he has now.”
“The British built Hong Kong international airport, yet the Secretary of State says that it is impossible for us to build our own island airport. Mr. Oakervee will consider all the issues, not least the possibility of a new north-south link between Kent and Essex; the opportunity to re-orient the whole development of London to the east, which successive Governments have tried for many years to do, for example through the Thames Gateway; and enabling 24-hour operation without overflying a single residence. Just think about that—not a single home will be disturbed by overflying to or from a Thames estuary airport. We should compare that to the absolute lunacy of disturbing millions of people every night as planes overfly so many residential homes near the various London airports. I invite the House to reflect on one final theme.”
“I have a copy of the Government’s consideration of Thames estuary airports for the 2003 White Paper. It consists of one report, on a mere 22 pages, that considers five or six different sites. It was clearly a desktop exercise. There has never been proper consideration of many of the sites that should now be in play. The Mayor has appointed Doug Oakervee to conduct a preliminary inquiry. As the Secretary of State knows, he is chairman of the Crossrail consortium. He also has an unrivalled record in airport construction. He is a civil engineer and, believe it or not, he was the project manager for the construction of Hong Kong international airport, which is on an offshore island. That was a British project.”
“Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford). I do not need to repeat in the limited time available many of the things that he rightly said about the merits of reopening the consideration of a Thames estuary airport. Let me say that the debate is not necessarily about continuing the expansion of capacity, but about the creation of viable capacity and asking whether we are going to expand capacity. The Mayor of London’s proposal has invited a certain amount of derision from some quarters in the Chamber this evening. However, I believe that he is absolutely right to help to reopen the consideration of a Thames estuary airport. He is taking the matter extremely seriously. He has done what the Government failed to do, namely to appoint a proper person to investigate the viability of the proposal.”
“The Government now confront extraordinary choices if they wish to continue with the present policy. Now, as the Member of Parliament for North Essex, I represent Dedham Vale, which is already suffering the depredations of overflying from Stansted. There has already been a substantial legal case involving moving the overflights to a different part of the country, but I fear for Dedham Vale, which has been designated an area of outstanding natural beauty particularly because of its tranquillity. If Stansted is allowed to expand, the noise pollution in Dedham Vale will continue. The second theme of the debate that comes over strongly is that, if we had the choice, we would not start from here, and London’s major hub international airport would not be where it is today. I commend the tremendous speech by the right hon.”
“That is where I come into the debate. As a callow youth in the early 1980s, just down from university, I was elected to Matching parish council during the public inquiry on Stansted. The outcome was that we were promised a cap of 15 million passengers per year. As time has passed, that assurance has been betrayed, just like all the other assurances that Governments of both parties have ever made about airports policy in the south-east, to comfort their way through the planning process. We are now looking at the prospect of 35 million passengers a year—or even 65 million passengers a year—and not one but two runways at Stansted. This is the story that colours the development of London airports. An extraordinary industry has been built up successfully, but from cottage industry airports dotted unsatisfactorily around London.”
“I gather that the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush (Mr. Slaughter) is a regular sparring partner of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands), who spoke before him. The hon. Gentleman led Hammersmith and Fulham council and my hon. Friend led the opposition, but such is the proposal that the Government are likely to table that they are now making common cause. The Secretary of State is to be congratulated on bringing together this Molotov-Ribbentrop-style pact across the Chamber against his proposal. What is motivating this atmosphere of reconciliation in the House? First, I sense that there is an atmosphere of betrayal—that is a theme that I draw out of the debate. Betrayals have happened over many years, but it is now a betrayal over alternative runways and the third runway at London Heathrow.”
“Q3. The Prime Minister keeps seeking to reassure home owners and small businesses by urging the banks to pass on rate cuts to their borrowers, but the Abbey National is putting up its lending margins today. Why does he keep making such meaningless reassuring noises, when he cannot even persuade his own banks—the ones he owns—to pass on their rate cuts?”