Britain should give up trying to punch above its weight internationally and stop routinely deploying troops to world trouble spots, the chairman of the parliamentary committee that oversees the intelligence services said yesterday.

Kim Howells told The Independent that the succession of British deaths in Afghanistan proved the time had come to abandon the pretence that the UK could be at "the very, very sharp end" of United Nations military operations.

Mr Howells, a former Foreign Office minister, called for a fundamental rethink of the nation's place on the world stage.