UK pilots embedded with coalition
allies' forces have been conducting air strikes over Syria against the
Islamic State group, it has emerged.
This is despite UK MPs voting in 2013 against military action in Syria.
About 20 personnel, including three pilots, have been embedded with US and Canadian forces, the BBC understands.
UK
defence secretary Michael Fallon has recently urged MPs to back UK
involvement in Syria and said their approval for action would be needed.
The Ministry of Defence said the personnel were operating as foreign troops.
In
response to a Freedom of Information request, submitted by the human
rights group Reprieve, the MoD confirmed that some UK military personnel
had been involved in military action against IS over Syrian airspace.
Parliament approved UK bombing of militant positions in Iraq last
year. However, MPs were not asked at the time to authorise strikes
across the border in Syria.
Earlier this month Mr Fallon urged MPs to consider backing air strikes on IS in Syria.
The UK does not need the authorisation of MPs to launch raids but Mr Fallon has said they will have the final say.
Labour
has indicated it would not oppose military action in Syria. Acting
leader Harriet Harman has said the case for air strikes was now
different to the situation in 2013, when Labour voted against UK
military action in Syria.
Britain has already been carrying out surveillance and air-to-air refuelling operations over Syria.
'Insensitivity'
Sir
Michael Graydon, former chief of the air staff, said the exchange
programme between the UK and its allies had been happening for "many
decades".
"My personal view is that what the government has
decided in this particular case under these circumstances is right", he
told the BBC.
"There are very few people involved in this, there
are none at the moment, the chances are there won't be for another two
or three months.
"I just think the practice of this is really much
more sensible - to allow them to be embedded and to operate, which is
what they have been doing, not to make a huge issue of it."
Conservative
MP John Baron, who campaigned against military action in Syria during
the last vote, told the BBC the government should explain its position
as it showed "insensitivity".
"Those troops or individuals should
be withdrawn from the embedded programme whilst this vote holds sway,
while it stills hold authority, until we vote again," he said.
"We
said no to military intervention, whether we should be intervening or
not, the fact is parliament said there should be no military
intervention."
29 August 2013: The government is defeated as MPs say no to military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government by 285-272
23 September 2014: The first US-led air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria take place
26 September 2014: MPs back British participation in air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq, by 524 to 43
30 September 2014: The RAF carries out its first air strikes of the Iraq mission
A
spokesman for the MoD, which refers to IS as Isil, said: "The UK is
contributing to the anti-Isil coalition air campaign against Isil
targets in Syria through the provision of intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance.
"Isil poses a direct threat to the UK and to
countries around the world. The UK is not conducting air strikes in
Syria and the government has made clear it would return to Parliament if
it proposed doing so.
"We have a long-standing embed programme
with allies but there are currently no pilots taking part in this
region. When embedded, UK personnel are effectively operating as foreign
troops."
The MoD said UK pilots were not currently taking part in the region, but ministers would have been aware of their recent role.
Reprieve
said the debate about whether the UK should expand its military action
to include Syria was now obsolete and that the government should "come
clean" about what its armed forces were already doing.
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