Helmand Province

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he will be reassured by what we heard during our meeting with the new governor in Helmand, Governor Mangal. He has drawn up a five-year plan—I hate to call it that, because it conjures up images of Stalinist plans—offering a clear carrot and stick approach to poppy farmers. By ensuring that the infrastructure is in place so that goods can be brought to market, he intends in the next few years to offer real alternative livelihoods to try to wean poppy farmers off the need to grow poppies. We were quite encouraged by the plan's detail. Clearly, as hon. Members have highlighted, building capacity is at the heart of what we need to do in Helmand province, and Afghanistan as a whole. From my humble experience of working in Afghanistan, I have no doubt that very good work is being done as a result of the majority of DFID's efforts in Kabul in attempting to build capacity in the national Government, although some Ministries are doing far better than others—as ever, the Ministry for Rural Reconstruction and Development seems to be pushing along very well. However, translating that capacity building down to provincial level, where local Afghans will actually see a difference, is proving to be much more challenging. During our trip to Lashkar Gah, we met some of the local government officials from each of the Government Departments who have been charged with trying to build capacity locally. What we heard was not very encouraging. Some three years ago, when we first became involved in Helmand, about 200 schools were open in the province, but today there are just 56. That is a direct example of what my hon. Friend was saying: our intervention has, to a degree, had a detrimental effect. Yesterday, when I argued with the Secretary of State for Defence in the House, he denied that those facts were true, but it is what we are being told, not by DFID officials—although they were present at our meeting—but by Afghans charged with delivery.