The head of Britain’s armed forces on Sunday said the country was “lettin-g down” allies by not participating in airstr-ikes against ISIS in Syria.

Britain is part of a coalition hitting ISIS targets in Iraq, but its Parliament has yet to be convinced of the need to join airstrikes in neighbouring Syria and an influential committee of MPs recently advised against action.

“To an extent yes, we are letting our allies down by not being a full player,” General Nichol-as Houghton, the chief of the defence staff, told Sky News on Sunday.

“The source of their power, their command and control, their logistics, their organisation, the place from which they issue orders to international terrorists is from within Syria. In the most simplistic way it’s like being asked to win a football match but not being able to go into the opponents’ half,” he added.

Foreign secretary Phi-lip Hammond later den-ied that the government had given up on a parliamentary vote. “We are in exactly the same place that we’ve been for months,” he told the BBC. “When we think its right to do so, when we think we have a consensus, we will go to the House of Commons.”

Mr Hammond said the government was still in an “exploratory” phase with the Opposition Labour party, which recently elected leftist Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, and was yet to establish if it had the cross-party support required to win a vote to extend the airstrikes.

He admitted that Britain’s decision “wasn’t going to tip the balance” in Syria and called for a political solution to bring about a ceasefire in the four-year civil war.