First, I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his reflections on the service and sacrifice of the UK armed forces. I am not sure that I accept his characterisation of the situation as defeat. Many members of the armed forces will reflect, as I do, on their tactical and operational successes in their individual tours and in the districts for which they were responsible. If they arrive in a district and the school is shut, but when they leave, it is open; or if they arrive in a district and the market has six stalls, but when they leave, it has 20—those are the sorts of successes that show them with their own eyes that their service has been worth it and they have done good. The shadow Secretary of State picks up on what the Chief of the Defence Staff said in his interview on the “Today” programme last week, and I do not think that anybody in the UK Government would shy away from his very honest assessment of what happened. I think we should be clear that the disagreement, to the extent that there was one, was over a matter of months, rather than over staying there for four years more. As I said, there is a logic to this, because we were at a decision point no matter what. On 1 May, the accommodation would run out and we would be preparing for a fighting season; or we would need a new political accommodation with the Taliban, and that would remove the political imperative altogether; or we would take the decision, as the President did, and with which NATO subsequently agreed unanimously, to leave and, in doing so, to force the pace of the political process. I think that is the right thing. The opportunity to prosecute counter-terrorism missions from the wider region into Afghanistan is something that we are working up with our NATO allies and the Americans at the moment. I am sure that the UK will have a role in that. The exact withdrawal timeline is not one that I intend to share publicly—I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will understand the operational security reasons why that is the case—but a withdrawal from Afghanistan this year is not unexpected. It was completely within our planning last year and over the winter. We can achieve the timeline that is required without any cost to our other planned military activities this summer. I can reassure him that my right hon. Friends the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary are working with all appropriate haste to make sure that those who have served alongside us in Afghanistan are looked after in the future.

I share my hon. Friend’s assessment of the requirement for regional partners not only to step up and take a stake in Afghanistan’s peace, but to behave responsibly in the way they go about their diplomatic affairs in the region. His characterisation of what remains of the coalition is, if he does not mind my saying so, somewhat out of date. We have been down to a residual counter-terrorism mission for some time. For five years or more, the coalition has not extended its writ across the whole country. Actually, the Afghan national security forces have done a good job of maintaining security within the borders of Afghanistan since the NATO mission stepped back towards the current CT mission. I am full of optimism for what the Afghan national security forces could achieve. It depends, of course, on their being empowered to do so by a future Government in Kabul.

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right to ask what the mechanism is for solidifying the peace within Afghanistan... But there is a set of Afghan national security forces in place now that are capable of maintaining the peace, and I genuinely believe that there is a political will to achieve that and an expectation within the Afghan public that their politicians will achieve that. How the lessons are learned from this campaign, as they were with Iraq, is for my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary to decide in due course... This year alone the UK will spend up to £70 million on supporting the Afghan security forces.

Within the 150,000-plus service personnel who have served in Afghanistan, there will be many thousands of reservists who have mobilised and answered their nation’s call... There is every intention of building on their success in Iraq and Afghanistan as we look at how we use the reserves in the future.

The hon. Gentleman asks me a very straightforward question, and I hope I can give him a very straightforward answer... The plans are well established, and I have every confidence in the ability of our military and the militaries of our allies to deliver them... He is quite right to raise our responsibility to those who have served alongside us.

I think that our resolve has been tested and demonstrated by the longevity of the mission... Clearly the military presence within Afghanistan itself will come to an end, but our ability to remain connected to the Afghan military academy remotely is undiminished.

The hon. Gentleman picks up on one of the great successes of the intervention in Afghanistan... There are two things from which we should take heart... Secondly, the Taliban want legitimacy within the international community if or when they become a part of a future Afghanistan Government.

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is of course correct that the military could underpin an accommodation of sorts almost indefinitely, but that is not an enduring solution for any country. The decision NATO took last week recognises that we are at a moment of decision. The accommodation with the Taliban is coming to an end, so the decision is to extend the deal, which removes the political imperative, to fight this summer, and who knows where that would have gone—and from a position of having far fewer troops in Afghanistan than has been the case since five years ago—or to force the pace of the political settlement. All those options are imperfect, but what matters now, exactly as my right hon. Friend says, is that the Governments who have formed the alliance now use their soft power to ensure that the parties come round the table and an enduring peace is found.

The decision to draw down our military presence within Afghanistan has been announced, and I know that the hon. and gallant Member will appreciate that we will need over the next couple of months to work through the intricacies of what capabilities may endure in Afghanistan. However, it is clear that the United Kingdom will not tolerate an ungoverned space in Afghanistan from which international terrorism can find a base and from which attacks on the UK homeland or those of our allies can be mounted. A CT effort within the wider region will be required to counter that, and of course the alliance reserves the right to go back in if the security situation deteriorates to such an extent that our national security is threatened.

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I should be clear that, as I hope the integrated review made clear, the UK has an ambition to be a force for good in the world and that where terrorism threatens the UK’s interests or those of our allies, we will be present, building the capacity of partner forces and helping to remove that instability and insecurity around the world. What we have learnt over the past 20 years is that there are ways of doing that, and the vision we have set out in the integrated review is for a far more intelligent way of doing that: developing capacity, tackling insecurity and being a force for good around the world.

I fear that that question invites a reprise for all the answers I have already given, but, yes, the Afghan national security forces have the capacity to maintain peace within Afghanistan. The key is whether they are empowered to do so by a future Government in Kabul.

IS and the Taliban are no friends, and I suspect that that will moderate the march of IS in Afghanistan. My right hon. Friend invites me to set out how we might gift the equipment we have been using in Afghanistan. Some of it will be gifted to the Afghan national security forces. Where we have critical capabilities that we want to recover to the UK, we will of course do that. Whether or not those are in due course re-gifted in other theatres is a decision for us to take over the next few months, but I note his suggestion.

The institutional connections between the UK Ministry of Defence and our armed forces, and the Afghan Ministry of Defence and armed forces are as strong as one would expect them to be, given that those relationships have been forged in combat over the past 20 years. As I said in response to an earlier question, there is every intent to continue to mentor the Afghan national security forces and MOD remotely, and to continue our involvement in the Afghan national military academy remotely, and of course to give the opportunity to Afghan officers and non-commissioned officers to attend courses in the UK that will maintain those connections and develop their capability.

My right hon. Friend has seen with his own eyes the good work that has happened. As I said in response to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), there are opportunities to maintain those connections even without a physical presence on the ground. I have every confidence that we will do so. This is not just about politics and ministerial decision making; there are friendships between our armed forces that mean that the UK armed forces and UK MOD want to see the Afghan army, the Afghan security forces and the Afghan MOD succeed in the future. We will do everything we can to maintain those connections and develop capabilities so that the green shoots that my right hon. Friend saw can grow.

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his question. Yes, the Ministry of Defence and Her Majesty’s Government will continue to meet that obligation. One of the things that came out of the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan was huge public recognition of the debt that we owe to our armed forces, and a recognition of the sacrifice and the commitment that they make on behalf of our nation. It is absolutely incumbent on those of us who now have the honour of making policy in Government to ensure that we live up to those obligations and that our veterans of Afghanistan, Iraq and all other conflicts are properly looked after.

My hon. Friend has taken me well out of my comfort zone. If he will indulge me, I might need to write to him.

This issue has been touched on in previous questions. There is a commitment to spend up to £70 million in Afghanistan this year alone in support of the Afghan security forces, and of course there is an aid package beyond that. Very obviously, the end of our military contribution in Afghanistan does not mean the end of our wider diplomatic and development agenda in the country, and I fully expect that the UK Government will maintain that commitment so that we can do our bit in helping Afghanistan to succeed in the future.

This Government, and indeed our nation, place huge importance on our duty to remember the sacrifice of those who have given their lives in the service of our nation around the world. I have every confidence that we will continue to do so, and when we reach remembrance events in the autumn I think people will be particularly focused on the end of our military operations in Afghanistan and the sacrifice made there.

Clearly, the announcement was that there will be no military presence in Afghanistan. Air support can come from outwith Afghanistan, and I suspect that decisions on that would be based on the security situation at the time. However, I think that the priority of all in NATO is to force the pace of a political settlement, which our departure does.

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her work in chairing the APPG, to which I think my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa and I will present the annual report in the coming weeks. The work on this issue is important and characterises so much of our contribution to conflicts.

I hope that the hon. Lady will have taken some reassurance from my earlier answers on the work of the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary. I am sure that they will come forward with an answer imminently.

I refer my hon. Friend to my previous answer. I have seen with my own eyes just how integral those locally employed civilians were to the success of our mission. We owe them a debt. There is work going on in Government to make sure that that debt is paid.

I know that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I refrain from making policy on the hoof at the Dispatch Box, but the suggestion is noted, and, as I have made clear in previous answers, it is clear that the removal of the military instrument does not bring with it an end to our commitment in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a deeply Islamic and conservative country. As my hon. Friend will know from the amazing work that she does as the Prime Minister’s special enjoy for freedom of religion or belief, those countries are hard ones in which to espouse the values that she so enthusiastically campaigns for.

I can. The bilateral relationship between the UK Government and the Afghan Government will endure, and so, too, will our engagement through multilateral forums such as the UN.

That is exactly the sort of support that we envisage. The agreement is that there will be no military presence within Afghanistan, but that does not diminish in the slightest our ability to continue to have a strong relationship with the Afghan national security forces and to develop their capability either from the outside in or by bringing them to study and train in the United Kingdom.

That last point is clearly somewhat problematic. People from across the United Kingdom serve in our units and they serve as the UK’s armed forces. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman knows how impractical his suggestion is, but perhaps he is playing to an audience back home. As for the hon. Gentleman’s earlier point, it would be impractical in the extreme for all operational decisions, some of which have to be taken with some haste, to be a matter for a vote in this House. The detail that underpins those decisions often cannot be fully shared at the Dispatch Box, for obvious reasons. The Government have, throughout, made every effort to be transparent about the way the Afghanistan campaign has been progressing. I remember there being regular updates to the House on it and the opportunity for Ministers to be held to account, but I am not sure that military planning by parliamentary vote is necessarily the way to show the coherence of the military instrument to our adversaries overseas.

This is simply the end of military operations in Afghanistan; it is not the end of the UK’s commitment to that country. Everybody is clear on that. So, too, are our partners and allies around NATO and beyond. The international effort to deliver peace and security within Afghanistan continues; it is just no longer appropriate to seek to achieve that through military means.

I do not accept that we have not achieved what we were there to do in the first place. We went into Afghanistan as a direct consequence of what happened on 11 September 2001. Article 5 was invoked because an attack on one was an attack on us all, and that attack originated in Afghanistan. Since then, there has been no international terrorist attack launched from Afghanistan on the UK, the US or, indeed, any other NATO ally, so in that sense the mission was achieved. Actually, the mission has gone far further, as we have explored in our exchanges on the urgent question: in the 20 years that we have been there, we have given the opportunity for the Afghan Government to establish and strengthen and for an Afghan civil society to flourish. I truly believe that we have set the conditions within which a political process now has the best chances of success.

As my right hon. Friend will know from his extensive experience of peace processes around the world, it is very likely—indeed, almost certain—that a lasting peace settlement in Afghanistan will involve the Taliban as part of the Afghan Government. It is in all our interests to support the political process as it plays out, but if there is a return to an ungoverned space that gives succour to international terrorism that is a threat to the UK homeland or the interests of our allies, we of course reserve the right to protect our interests, both unilaterally and multilaterally through NATO.