Tony Baldry (Banbury): I congratulate the Minister of State on his well-deserved promotion and return to the Department. I know that the International Development Committee is looking forward to working with him. I entirely endorse what the hon. Member for Brent, North (Mr. Gardiner) said. I agree with every word, and I do not intend to repeat his comments.

We are not the only ones who are concerned about reconstruction. I noticed in the International Herald Tribune last weekend a report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington on 22 May. The International Herald Tribune led into the report with the following comment:

"Lawmakers have been seething for weeks over the administration's failure to consult in depth with Congress about the costs, methods and goals of rebuilding Iraq".

This House has not had very much information about the goals, costs or methods of rebuilding Iraq. The previous Secretary of State appeared before the Select Committee before conflict broke out and talked about the costs of humanitarian rebuilding in Iraq. Since then, with the exception of the daily DFID updates on the web, there has been no coherent ministerial statement on where DFID is going in Iraq, which we clearly need. One gets a sense of there having been a void.

The military clearly expects DFID to be doing things. That was reflected in an article for The Guardian last Saturday, written by the shadow Defence Secretary, who had recently been in Iraq. He reported that wherever he went the military said, "Where is DFID?" I suspect that DFID has been saying, "Look, this is Geneva convention territory and the military has to establish security. That is its responsibility. Together with non-governmental organisations, we can go in only when the situation is secure." There is some confusion in the machinery of government that needs to be resolved, but it exists not only in this country. Clearly, there is also confusion in the United States. Senator Richard Lugar, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, said:

"I am concerned that the administration's initial stabilization and reconstruction efforts have been inadequate. The planning for peace was much less developed than the planning for war."

Senator Joe Biden referred to

"the administration's failure to acknowledge publicly that the postwar efforts would cost billions of dollars, require years of involvement and get the United States bogged down just as it is in the Balkans."

He added:

"When is the president going to tell the American people that we're likely to be in the country of Iraq for three, four, five, six, eight, 10 years, with thousands of forces and spending billions of dollars, because it's not been told to them yet?"

When we considered Afghanistan, all the evidence was about security, security, security. Establishing security in Iraq is obviously a job for the military, but it will take a long time and considerable commitment and resources. It is not yet clear, however, that there is public acknowledgement�in the United States or the United Kingdom�that that is going to happen. Of course, because Afghanistan was under UN responsibility, the advantage was that we could hand over responsibility for the international security assistance force to others, such as the Turks and the Germans, in due course. We will not be able to do that in Iraq, because other countries will not be willing to come forward. DFID has to be much more forthcoming with the House on issues relating to reconstruction. The Intelligence and Security Committee will consider who said what to whom in its assessment on weapons of mass destruction, and the Foreign Affairs Committee will review the matter. The International Development Committee will follow very closely the reconstruction of Iraq.

I make a gentle final point. The International Development Committee has not heard from the previous Secretary of State since before the outbreak of war. We invited the new Secretary of State to give evidence, and 10 June was fixed as a date. She says that she will be in Iraq then�that is understandable�but no new date has been set. I would have thought that the Secretary of State, who is a Minister of the Crown with responsibilities, would not need to go to Iraq to discover the Whitehall line to take or what DFID is doing in that country, but would want to take the earliest possible opportunity to tell the Select Committee, which scrutinises her Department, exactly what DFID has been doing and intends to do about the reconstruction of Iraq.

The Secretary of State's predecessor was extremely forthcoming about Afghanistan because, I suspect, it was considered to be a good news story. The reticence of DFID Ministers over telling the House what is happening in Iraq creates a suspicion that it is a bad news story. The speedier Ministers are to give a full account, the quicker they will rebut that concern.