Afghanistan

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. The problem has been not just equipment but recruiting, training and retaining good police officers, and obviously we had that appalling incident at Nad Ali last year. This cause has come out among Members from all parts of the House: for too long not enough focus was given to the most important things in Afghanistan, of which training the police was absolutely key. The effort is now going in. I met American and British police trainers, and the police training college in Lashkar Gah is now turning out very good police officers, but for too long that particular issue was ignored.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister believe that the mine clearance equipment available to our troops is now the best in the world?

[The Prime Minister]

Certainly I had a presentation out in Afghanistan on the equipment now being used and the training undertaken, and what our troops are able to do is incredibly impressive. The truth—I am sure that the former Defence Secretary will agree—is that we have to keep on investing and catching up with the latest technologies that the enemy use, because they are incredibly cunning at trying to find new ways of making those things even harder to find.