Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy accused government of keeping public and parliament in dark over deployments
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Nicholas Watt
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 May 2011 20.12 BST
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Bullets litter a street in Misrata, Libya. Labour minister Jim Murphy believes the conflict is 'sliding towards stalemate'. Photograph: AP
Deployment of Apache attack helicopters to Libya would be a serious escalation of a conflict otherwise "sliding towards stalemate", the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, has warned.
In the first breach in the bipartisan approach to the bombing campaign, Murphy attacked the government for keeping the public and parliament "in the dark" about Libya, and declining to brief shadow ministers on confidential terms for weeks.
Other MPs warned of "mission creep" and said that the deployment of the attack helicopters showed the Nato operation was now seeking to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi's regime rather than protect civilians.
Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat armed forces minister, was summoned to parliament to answer questions after the Guardian reported that Britain and France were going to deploy the helicopters against Libya. He told MPs Britain had not yet decided the question. But a Ministry of Defence source said: "The chances are it is going to happen."
Murphy rounded on the government after Gérard Longuet, the French defence minister, had said that France would deploy 12 helicopters. Le Figaro quoted Longuet as saying Britain would make a similar commitment, adding: "The sooner the better is what the British think." The shadow defence secretary said: "The British people will desperately be concerned that French ministers seem to know more about the deployment of British military equipment than the British parliament.
"Parliament hasn't written the government a blank cheque on Libya. Ministers should never keep the British public in the dark on major deployments.
"This is a serious moment. It would be a serious escalation if such a commitment were to be made. Parliament should not, and should never be, kept in the dark." He later warned that Nato was struggling to achieve a breakthrough. "In a complicated situation, sliding towards stalemate, the government has to continually win the argument with the public and parliament. That means taking parliament seriously and continuing to brief the opposition."
Shadow ministers are irritated that they have not been briefed about Libya on confidential privy council terms for some weeks. Ed Miliband attended a meeting of the national security council last month.
Harvey said no decision had been made on the Apache helicopters, though he acknowledged that using them would allow attacks on moving targets. "For the avoidance of all doubt, no such decision has been taken by the UK," he said.
"It is an option we are considering. No decision has been taken, and … there is absolutely no sense in which it is true to say that we have kept parliament in the dark about a decision we have taken."
He added: "I do not accept that, if we were to take a decision at some point to use attack helicopters, that would be an escalation of what we are doing in Libya. The targets would remain the same. It would simply be a tactical shift in what assets we use to try and hit those targets." But using them would give "the ability to strike moving targets with greater precision".
Labour sources said that the party had always said it would both support and scrutinise the operation in Libya.
"We are now focusing more on the scrutiny," one source said.
Others MPs said the Nato mission was now designed to overthrow Gaddafi. David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall North, said: "Despite denials, UN security council resolution 1973 is in fact being used for regime change. Regime change is totally outside international law." John Barron, the Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay, said: "Whether or not we deploy Apache helicopters, the fact that a key Nato ally has [done so] represents a significant escalation in this conflict and reinforces the point that regime change has been the aim of our intervention."
Dennis Skinner, Labour MP for Bolsover, said: "Hasn't this intervention been subject to mission creep ever since it began?" The statements that have been made in this house have indicated that – a little bit of help here, special forces there, further intervention. Now the French, who initiated this intervention in the first place because of an election in France next year ... there is no surprise to me that they are now telling the British government what the next phase is."
Chris Bryant, Labour's former Europe minister, warned of a stalemate. He said: "The trouble is that, if the government's aim is not regime change, then it is basically stalemate. How long is that stalemate going to go on?"
Bernard Jenkin, the former Tory shadow defence secretary, said: "We either have to break the stalemate or broker a peace."
Other MPs were supportive. Nicholas Soames, a former Tory defence minister, said: "The deployment, were it to happen, of the Apache would be entirely appropriate given, particularly, the change in tactics of the Gaddafi forces. [There is] the requirement to have a highly effective machine that is able to deal with the hard-to-find targets."
The former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: "Were Apache helicopters to be deployed – which, after all, carry missiles – what would the difference in principle be between that and the use of fast jets carrying missiles?"
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