Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the remarks made to the International Relations and Defence Committee by General Sir Richard Barrons on 12 March that the UK's role with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission was "not in support of a strategy of any kind other than "We should do a bit more UN peacekeeping"."

We do not recognise General Sir Richard Barrons' characterisation of the UK's forthcoming deployment to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, MINUSMA. The deployment, to one of the UN's largest and most complex Peacekeeping operations, supports UK priorities for peacekeeping reform. It also forms part of our strategic approach to the increasing instability in the Sahel region, which brings together our development, diplomacy and defence expertise to help tackle the underlying causes of poverty and conflict in the region. Fulfilling a capability gap communicated by the UN, UK troops will deliver a long-range reconnaissance capability that will provide greater awareness of possible threats. This will enable the mission to be more responsive and will contribute to the delivery of MINUSMA's mandate, including protection of civilians, as well as supporting the safety and security of UN peacekeepers. This deployment broadly maintains the UK's level of commitment to peacekeeping following the drawdown of the engineer task force from South Sudan earlier this year.