Linda Norgrove

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

In his opening remarks, the Foreign Secretary said that the hostages—Linda Norgrove and her colleagues—were taken by people wearing Afghan national army uniforms. Has he made any assessment of how many similar events have taken place in the past year in Afghanistan and of whether there is a problem with regard to the security of uniforms and other material from the Afghan national army?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman raises an entirely legitimate point, which deals with one of the issues that we will need to follow up after this incident. As far as I am aware, this is not the only incident in which Afghan national army uniforms have been abused. It is not easy in the circumstances of Afghanistan, and with an army that now numbers well over 100,000 and has a relatively high turnover rate, to control the uniforms available around the country. This may therefore be a difficult problem to address going forward, but we will certainly want to do some additional work in ISAF and with the Afghan Government on how to tackle it.