Lilian Greenwood
Main Page: Lilian Greenwood (Labour - Nottingham South)Evacuations from Afghanistan
Lilian Greenwood Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
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James Cleverly
My hon. Friend makes the point that although the Select Committee’s report is important, and it will be read and assessed with seriousness, we did not want to wait before we made improvements, so we took lessons from our internal process. Some of those lessons have already been applied in Ukraine, and I strongly believe that has improved the response to the situation there. We will continue to learn lessons and to strive to improve our performance, not just in Ukraine and Afghanistan but in all circumstances in which an emergency response is needed.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
We had 18 months to prepare for the US withdrawal but, as the Select Committee’s report exposes, the end to our mission was utterly chaotic, and many people to whom we owed a duty were left behind, abandoned, with their lives at immediate risk. Does the Minister not accept that this episode represents an appalling failure of planning by the Department’s political leadership? When will someone in this Government do the right thing and take responsibility?
James Cleverly
The precise timing of the US departure from Afghanistan was not a date that was widely shared, and the pace of the Taliban’s advance was not information that was widely known. We responded as promptly as we were able to. The professionalism of our public servants—both those in uniform and those out of uniform—was exemplary. We will of course learn lessons from that situation and, as I have said, some of them have already been applied. We will continue to ensure that we amend our processes and practices, so that if such a circumstance presented itself again, we would be able to respond better and faster.