Operation Herrick

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman’s views on this subject are well known. As I have announced, a small number of people—mainly logisticians—will possibly remain after 31 December 2014 to complete our redeployment from Bastion. In addition, we have committed to providing trainers and life support personnel for the Afghan national army officer training academy outside Kabul, which is a military training academy modelled on Sandhurst. Those are the only commitments we have made at the moment, amounting to a couple of hundred personnel on an ongoing basis. We judge that to be an effective and appropriate way for us to continue supporting Afghan national security forces, together with the £70 million a year cash support that we have pledged as part of the international community’s commitment.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Even before British troops have left, our brave Afghan interpreters have been threatened with assassination. How many of them must be killed before we do what we ought to do and offer those who wish to come to this country the opportunity to do so, as the previous Government rightly did for Iraqi interpreters?

[Mr Hammond]

The situation in Afghanistan is not the same as that in Iraq. Lessons were learned from the Afghan campaign, and the way that interpreters and other civilian employees have been recruited in Afghanistan has been modified accordingly to take those lessons on board. I assure my hon. Friend, however, that we will not turn our back on those who have served us in Afghanistan as locally employed civilians. We believe that Afghanistan has a future that will require skilled, capable people who are committed to building it post-2014. We want to explore all options for encouraging people, wherever they can, to be part of that future and help to build their country in which we have invested so heavily. We have and will continue to have mechanisms that deal with cases of intimidation or threat, including those that could, in extremis, allow for resettlement in this country.