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By Richard Norton-Taylor and Patrick Wintour~London Guardian
Ministers will come under intense pressure tomorrow over their handling of Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan when an influential committee of MPs challenges Gordon Brown’s insistence that a lack of helicopters has not cost lives.
With
General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the army, openly calling for more
“boots on the ground”, the Commons defence select committee is expected
to rush out a damning report that is likely to say the shortage of
helicopters has increased the danger to British soldiers
The
report’s publication is being speeded up in time for a parliamentary
debate on Afghanistan and the prime minister’s appearance in front of
the liaison committee of MPs. The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox,
has been criticising Brown for cutting the helicopter budget by £1.4bn
in 2004.
The committee will say that the lack of helicopters has
restricted the ability of British forces to undertake potentially
valuable operations. It will also reject claims that an increase in
flying hours overcomes the problems, as a helicopter can only be in one
place at one time. The report will also suggest that a larger
helicopter fleet would allow forces to undertake operations by flight
rather than on more dangerous operations by foot.
The committee
will challenge the Whitehall decision to renovate old Puma and Sea King
helicopters, arguing that it would have been better to buy new Merlin
helicopters that would have cost little more and been available sooner.
Overall the report will claim the government is planning to cut the
number of helicopters by as many as 100 by 2020.
The MPs strongly
criticised the lack of helicopters in hearings leading to tomorrow’s
report. They said they had heard that on visits to Afghanistan “every
brigade commander in Helmand has lamented the lack of sufficient
helicopters”.
Today it emerged that Dannatt is being flown around
Afghanistan in an American Black Hawk helicopter. “If I moved in an
American helicopter, it’s because I haven’t got a British helicopter,”
he said.
Challenged over the shortage of helicopters in the
Commons today by David Cameron, the prime minister referred to the
recent high death toll in a big offensive against Taliban fighters.
“I
think that we should look at this particular operation, Operation
Panther’s Claw, and be absolutely clear that it is not an absence of
helicopters that has cost the loss of lives,” he said.
Lord
Guthrie, former chief of the defence staff, told the Guardian that it
was disingenuous of the government to say British forces had enough
helicopters in Afghanistan. He has said fewer British soldiers would
have died if they had more helicopters.
Asked whether a shortage
of helicopters was putting soldiers’ lives at risk, Gen Sir Mike
Jackson, a former head of the army, told the BBC: “If a commander
wanted to make a manoeuvre by air and couldn’t because there weren’t
available helicopters and was forced therefore to do it on the ground
against his own judgment, then yes, that would arguably be the case.”
Dannatt
further increased pressure on the government by saying more “boots on
the ground” were key to success in Helmand and that he would like to
see “more energy” put into speeding up the supply of equipment to
British troops.
Asked whether they have the equipment they need,
he said: “It has probably not moved as fast as I would have liked … but
we are increasing the numbers.”
He said: “We can have effect
where we have boots on the ground. I don’t mind whether the feet in
those boots are British, American or Afghan, but we need more to have
the persistent effect to give the people confidence in us. That is the
top line and the bottom line.”
Brown said at prime minister’s
questions that President Hamid Karzai had acceeded to his request to
send more Afghan troops to Helmand province to back up UK and US
forces. The prime minister’s spokesman also indicated more strongly
than before that the British troop presence is likely to remain at the
current higher number of 9,000 troops after the Afghan preisdential
elections, and that the extra troops will be detailed to train the
growing Afghan army and police.
