Helmand Province

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie), who made an excellent speech. He covered some of the ground that I was going to cover, so I shall not. I thought that he got it absolutely right when he highlighted some of the problems of building capacity in the provinces, and I intend to touch on that matter in my speech. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) on a thought-provoking speech, much of which I agreed with, although a couple of elements I did not. He is absolutely right to say that the Conservative party's official position is not to put DFID back under FCO control. To take his speech in the round, one of his key points, with which I agree absolutely, is that we need to start looking at the whole question of development in Helmand province from the viewpoint of the Afghan. That is simply not being done to the degree that it should be. We have talked about producing community development plans via community development councils—having spoken with some councillors on my trip there a couple of weeks ago, I shall talk about that—but the fact remains that we are still not Afghan-focused. For my part, I have not travelled under my own steam in Afghanistan. I have travelled there with the Select Committee on Defence. I also served in Afghanistan for some weeks as a Royal Engineers major in charge of delivering reconstruction and development, so I got to see some of the work at first hand, and I went a couple of weeks ago to see the work of the stabilisation unit in Lashkar Gah. That trip was fascinating, and I shall discuss some of the points that came out of it in a few moments. In the short time that I have, I shall discuss the role of the stabilisation unit, which my hon. Friend touched on. We in this place are always slightly suspicious when Departments change their name; it is not normally a good sign, so the fact that the post-conflict reconstruction unit magically became the stabilisation unit was a clear sign that perhaps not everything was going well. However, having been to see the stabilisation unit at work in Lashkar Gah, I was encouraged that finally—some would argue that it has taken far too long—we are getting on the right track. The comprehensive approach that my hon. Friend described—security, governance and reconstruction—finally seems to be coming together, and for the first time the UK has produced a UK road map for bringing together the military effect to ensure that it contributes directly to the development needs in Helmand province. We are beginning—painfully slowly—to see the positive benefits of that. I recall during my time there visiting a PRT in Herat province, which was not experiencing the degree of conflict that Helmand was; we viewed it as the sort of province that we hoped Helmand would be in two or three years. However, I watched the Spanish military commander and the Spanish equivalent of DFID arguing over who was supporting whom and who was in control, which was a clear message that we needed to get the stabilisation unit right to try and put an end to that type of conflict between the military, DFID and the FCO. The one message that we were given—it seems to be quite genuine—is that the unit now has that under control and no longer are the military constantly arguing or vying with DFID over who is doing what and who is supporting whom. I was deeply encouraged by that. In addition, the PRT in Lashkar Gah is now commanded by an FCO official, not a military commander, so that conflict seems to have ended. This debate is specifically about the military action in support of development, of which I have some experience, as I said, having been a Royal Engineer working briefly in Kandahar and Helmand. While in Helmand a couple of weeks ago, as I talked with some of my colleagues in the Royal Engineers, it became clear to me that great frustrations remain about the speed at which money gets to them for delivering projects that they are asked to undertake, as the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife explained—for example, road-building projects to connect the main towns of the Helmand valley. Unfortunately, there still seems to be some rivalry over funding streams and who gets what money, and it has been argued that military support would be much greater if the process of getting money through were made faster. Indeed, yesterday in the House, I asked the Secretary of State for Defence that question, but he chose not to answer. As my hon. Friend rightly said, there is a gap between what we can realistically expect DFID operators to achieve in that difficult environment and what they ought to be achieving, given that we are entirely reliant on military engineers to deliver that effect. We have not quite managed to close that gap, but we are making progress. The gap is closing slowly, but until we close it entirely and can ensure a seamless transition, we must ensure that funding streams are available to both equally. My hon. Friend also mentioned the police, who in any normal country are the first line in ensuring security and governance. It became pretty clear during our trip a couple of weeks ago that the police in Helmand do not have a good reputation. In fact, it was fascinating visiting the head of the counter-narcotics police, who claimed that almost every member of the normal police—if I can call them that—was a drug addict, permanently off their head on some form of drug and completely untrustworthy. They did not have the trust of the Afghan people. Clearly we must do an enormous amount of work in that area, because an effective police force is a key plank in delivering sustainable development in Helmand province. My hon. Friend also spoke about finding alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers and argued that it might well have to wait until other things have been put in place. He may well be right. In fact, some would argue that very little progress has been made in that area since we have been there.