Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Brine Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

We are having discussions with the Biden Administration on the approach to the proposed US withdrawal or drawdown from Afghanistan. It has to be linked to violence on the ground and to the wider peace talks and the agreements that have been made in Afghanistan between all the local parties, and it has to be based on the delivery of those conditions.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

  Given that covid-19 is reported to have killed more than 120,000 of our fellow citizens it is reasonable, in time, to understand where lessons can be learned domestically, but surely it is our moral duty to establish the origins of the virus and how it spread as an international community. So may I ask the Minister: what is the British Government’s view on where this came from and on the efficacy of the World Health Organisation’s current fact-finding mission to China?

[The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)]

My hon. Friend asks a very sensible question. The UK co-sponsored the World Health Assembly resolution in May 2020 that agreed an investigation into the origins of covid. It is important that that investigation is given the time it needs. The field mission to Wuhan was a key early step in the investigation. Of course we cannot pre-empt findings, but we will look closely at the field mission’s report when it is published. We have been clear that the investigation must be robust, open and scientifically rigorous.