Mali: UN Peacekeeping Mission

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My noble friend raises a very interesting point. I go back to my earlier observation about how the African states view involvement externally from the continent. We have to be sensitive to that. That is one of the areas of important discussion for the Accra initiative. I totally understand the point my noble friend makes. He will appreciate that I cannot give a specific response to it, but I am sure his point is noted and I will certainly make clear to my right honourable friend Mr James Heappey the concerns that my noble friend has expressed.

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister has been through a great deal of detail, but I do not think she mentioned the financial implications for the Ministry of Defence. Will there be some savings? If so, has she any idea what the figure might be? More importantly, can she assure the House that there is no intention that any of the units withdrawn will be withdrawn from the front line and that they will return to other duties on the front line?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My understanding is that a total of £79.85 million has currently been committed to the deployment through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. I emphasise that the decision to withdraw is nothing to do with money—I wish to make that clear to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. It is to do with a fundamental change in the operational environment, which means that we are trying to support a peacekeeping mission when the host country is not prepared to co-operate on that objective and is enlisting the help of parties that have a directly inimical attitude to such an objective.

As to future funding, we have to look at the Accra initiative and see what unfolds from that. We have not yet asked His Majesty’s Treasury to fund that initiative. When we know more about what is needed and how much funding we will apply for, we will make sure that this is an agreed, cross-government effort. The noble and gallant Lord will remember that Operation Newcombe, our contribution to Mali, was resourced by two different funds. It was resourced by the special reserve for our support to Operation Barkhane and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund for our contribution to the MINUSMA mission.