FCDO Staffing

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. When I visit our posts around the world—around my region—I am incredibly pleased to see the seamless integration of various Departments that are represented on those platforms. Trade is an incredibly important part of our global posture. He is absolutely right that maintaining the FCDO’s ability to support the foreign-facing work of other Departments will remain a top priority for us.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I have a great many constituents with family members trapped in Afghanistan who are living in hiding and fearing for their lives. One family member writes:

“It’s such a struggle to be here, we have no idea what to do…we are literally running out of everything and it’s getting cold”.

Surely this is not the time to be considering cutting resources when we desperately need more action to help those left behind in Afghanistan and increasingly desperate when we know that the country faces a humanitarian crisis.

[James Cleverly]

The situation in Afghanistan remains terrible, which is why we have doubled our financial support to it, for the very reasons that the hon. Lady highlighted. We will continue to work through diplomatic channels both internationally in support of stability and improvement in Afghanistan and with the countries immediately neighbouring it. Our commitment to Afghanistan remains undiminished, notwithstanding the fact that we no longer have a military presence there, and we will encourage the Taliban to do the right thing to abide by the commitments they have made with regard to such things as girls’ education, women’s freedom and not being a home for terrorism. We will judge them on their actions, not their words.