Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee
Debate between Hannah Bardell and Tom Tugendhat(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tom Tugendhat
I would be absolutely delighted to. As many Members of the House will know, I share any Member’s phone number with other Members once I have got their permission to do so, and if the hon. Lady would like to ask me, I would be very happy to do exactly that.
I share much of the criticism that I have heard from various Members about how the relief and evacuation operations have been handled. I have been pretty critical of the ways in which questions have been answered and co-ordination has been conducted. I think I have also been pretty robust in expressing how that should be improved.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
On the matter of responses, I wrote to the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues in the Government about a friend of mine and a group who were trapped in Afghanistan. The friend of mine, who I worked with 10 years ago at the US Department of State, was an adviser to the Afghan Government. Not only had he fled Afghanistan with his family and gone to Turkey because he saw the writing on the wall, unlike our security services, but he had key expertise to offer. Yet I was not even able to get a response from the Government to acknowledge the name of my friend and the group of human rights defenders. I got a standard response. Luckily my friend has been given passage to the US, but is it not a disgrace that the hon. Gentleman’s Government will not even acknowledge the individual cases and lives that we are raising with them?
Foreign Affairs Committee
Debate between Hannah Bardell and Tom Tugendhat
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Lady makes an extremely valid point. Of course, we called in this report for absolute access in various areas, and for the special representative of the Secretary-General—Special Representative Patten—to have access, as she is expected to do this week, to the capital. But that needs to go further. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees need access on the ground, not just with the Government.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman and his Committee for the excellent report. My Scottish National party colleagues and I agree with the Committee that the UK bears significant responsibility for the international failure effectively to respond to the crisis, considering the UK’s role on the UN Security Council. Does he agree that the UK Government need to suspend their military assistance programme to end their military ties to the Burmese region?
Tom Tugendhat
I not only agree with the hon. Lady; I welcome the fact that the Government have already done so.