Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her question. I can tell her that my view remains absolutely crystal clear—adamantine—that we will be better off extricating ourselves from the toils of the EU legal system. As the Prime Minister rightly said, we are going to leave the penumbra of European legislation and that is the right thing to do for this country. We will go forward with a fantastic free trade deal in goods and services that will be good for this country and good for the EU.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

Given the deteriorating security situation in and around Lashkar Gah, what lessons has the Foreign Secretary learned from the British deployment to Helmand?

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work—he knows the country extremely well indeed. It is important that we provide support to Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah. Unfortunately, the Taliban have pushed back from the Pakistani border and until we get some sense of governance back into the capital city of Lashkar Gah, I am afraid that the Taliban will continue to push towards Kandahar.