Afghanistan

James Duddridge Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is right to raise that issue. A lot of the UK Government’s work has been on prevention: improving the underlying conditions for women in Afghanistan. Of course other countries—for example, the United States and Canada—have also focused on helping women who have already suffered physical violence. I assure her that we will continue to work at the national level with the new Government and the new President who will be in place after the elections are finally concluded. We will also work at the provincial level and we will continue, through programmes such as Tawanmandi, to work at the grass-roots level with these organisations, whose people I have met both here and in Afghanistan, to do what we can at an individual community-based level to make sure that those women are supported and can get on with their work. As she points out, some of these people pay the ultimate price. I met someone who was over in London recently who said that she would be happy to lose her life if that is what it took for women’s prospects in Afghanistan to improve in the long term. That was an amazing statement for her to make, and the UK Government will certainly play their role in trying to ensure that people can go about that work safely.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

The Secretary of State identified the importance of economic development and of revenue collection. I know that DFID and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs support a number of countries around the world on the revenue development side. Has that been considered for Afghanistan? Is it already happening?

[Justine Greening]

It is already happening; we are doing work with the tax revenue authority of Afghanistan. The good news is that since 2004-05 tax revenues increased from just $250 million to more than $2 billion by 2011-12. So things are moving in the right direction and we will continue that work.