David Davis

Yes, that is right. All of them had soldiers serve under them at risk on the frontline and had soldiers die under their command, so they are all people with strong knowledge of what we are talking about. To go on with the quotation: “And make no mistake, our closest allies are watching uneasily, and our enemies will be rubbing their hands.” If we do not speak up to protect both our current service personnel and our veterans, the innocent will suffer, as I have described, because we will not be able to do what we have done in the past and we will find ourselves unable to defend our nation when called upon. The Minister did not like it when my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire raised this issue, and I understand that it is an uncomfortable one for a day like today, but it is important that we are not guilty of hypocrisy in this Chamber, and that we recognise that the people we are standing up for face a new threat that we have to deal with. I have to say to the House, again to the Minister’s probable discomfort, that I have been surprised, on two occasions in the last two weeks, to have people on the frontline on this issue quote Martin Luther King: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” We owe it to them not to be silent on these issues.