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The Commons has voted in favour of the military mission in Afghanistan, the first time it has been given the chance to vote on the war since British forces entered the country nine years ago.
MPs voted 310 to 14, a majority of 296, in favour of a motion tabled by Peter Bone (Con, Wellingborough) stating that: "This House supports the continued deployment of UK armed forces in Afghanistan".
The vote came at the end of a debate on the war scheduled by the new backbench business committee.
Made up of backbench MPs, the committee has been given the power to decide what topics should be debated outside of government time in the House.
While there have been numerous debates and statements in the House of Commons on the military operations in Afghanistan, MPs have never had the chance to vote on whether they support the deployment.
British forces entered Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in order to drive the Taliban from power and hunt down Al Qaida.
334 British service personnel have died in Afghanistan since 2001, the second highest casualty rate of all the coalition forces engaged in the country.
The United States, which recently dramatically increased its presence in the country, has lost 1,278 personnel.
Defence secretary Liam Fox said the process of withdrawing combat troops was "about phasing out not walking out".
He said: "As Afghan sovereignty grows, so the nature of the Isaf operations and the role of our forces will evolve.
"But what is clear to me, it was clear to the previous government, and what must be clear to our allies in Isaf too is that any drawdown in force levels, as responsibility is transferred to the Afghans, must be done in a coherent way by the alliance," Dr Fox said.
"This is about phasing out not walking out."
Labour critcised the government’s deadline of withdrawing combat troops in Afghanistan by 2015.
The shadow defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth said, "Unless there are conditions-based timelines rather than an arbitrary finish date, the success of the mission is not helped."
Ainsworth added that "patient counter-insurgency”" was the only way forward in Afghanistan.
He said that force densities and sufficient military equipment needed to be maintained in order for British troops in Afghanistan to be successful and challenged the government on stalling on an order of 22 Chinnock helicopters that was due to be placed prior to the election.
James Arbuthnot, the Conservative chair of the defence select committee, said that the nine years after the war had started, the reasons for being in Afghanistan had changed and international community support had "diminished".
He said, "I believe that our presence in Afghanistan should be seen as part of a wider global security mission in the Middle East region as a whole and we should begin to explain it as that."
Speaking during the debate Labour MP Paul Flynn said Britain should begin to withdraw its soldiers from the conflict.
He said: "The rate at which British soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan is now four times that of our US counterparts.
"The whole of the operation is continuing and there isn't any possible outcome that is going to be just, that is going to be honourable."
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion) described the conflict in Afghanistan as an "unwinnable war" that was costing the country more than £7m a day.
She added: "It is not unpatriotic to seek to recognise that there is no military solution to the crisis in Afghanistan and to bring our troops home safely."
There has thus far been broad cross-party consensus on the operations in Afghanistan, unlike the fractious decision to take part in the US led invasion of Iraq.
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