Prime minister says helicopter capacity has doubled over last two years, but David Cameron disputes this
Gordon Brown today delivered a robust defence of government policy in Afghanistan amid signs that the cross-party consensus on the issue is starting to break down.
In a statement to the Commons, the prime minister said that helicopter capacity in Afghanistan had almost doubled over the last two years and that commanders on the ground were satisfied that they had the manpower they needed.
But David Cameron, the Tory leader, said that in reality there had been “no increase in helicopter capacity at all” because the number of troops in Afghanistan who needed them had doubled since 2006.
Ministers have faced a barrage of complaints following the death of eight soldiers within 24 hours at the end of last week, which took the death toll in Afghanistan above the total for the number of British soldiers killed in the Iraq war.
The Tories and the Liberal Democrats support the Afghan mission, but they have been increasingly critical of the way it is being conducted.
Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, told MPs that they should “try to make the maximum contribution to maintaining cross-party support” for what the troops were doing. But, during defence questions, several Labour MPs criticised the Tories for supposedly playing politics with the issue.
In his statement, Brown said that in the last two years the government had increased helicopter numbers by 60% and, taking into account the provision of extra crews and equipment, helicopter capacity had increased by 84%.
On troop levels, he said: “I have been assured by commanders on the ground and at the top of our armed services that we have the manpower we need for current operations.”
He said that three quarters of terrorist plots against the UK originated from the area around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and that the case for intervention in Afghanistan now was the same as it was in 2001: “to prevent terrorist attacks here in Britain and across the world”.
He also said that he had been assured that Operation Panther’s Claw, the ongoing operation in Helmand, was having “a major impact on the Taliban” and the morale of British forces was “high”.
But, replying to the prime minister, Cameron said that “more needs to be done to set out and explain” British policy in Afghanistan. He also pointed out that, when Brown was chancellor in 2004, the Ministry of Defence’s helicopter budget had been cut by £1.4bn.
Earlier today, at the launch of a Tory policy document, Cameron described the lack of suitable helicopters in southern Afghanistan as “an extreme emergency”.
Cameron said: “The government made a historic mistake with a cutback of the helicopter programme, and they did it at a time when our troops were engaged both in Iraq and Afghanistan … In these conflicts, mobility is absolutely key.
“You have got to commit the resources so that they can do the job properly. The other thing we should do is [make] much more effort to go to every single Nato country and really hold their feet to the fire about why their helicopters are not there.
“If you do a desktop search on how many helicopters and troop-carrying helicopters different Nato countries have, you come up with a very significant number. When you see what’s actually in Afghanistan, it is a much less significant number.”
Cameron said that many of those helicopters would be “being repaired, being mended, deployed elsewhere, but I would like to see a real effort by the government to get around every single Nato capital and put a maximum amount of pressure on to beg, borrow or, frankly, steal those helicopters that are necessary for our troops in Afghanistan”.
Earlier today, Ainsworth accompanied Gordon Brown on a visit to the RAF Benson helicopter base, in Oxfordshire.
They met the chief of staff, personnel and families and were briefed on the timeline for the planned deployment of Merlin helicopters in Afghanistan at the end of the year.
