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Vol. 814 Wednesday No. 42 18 August 2021 PARLIAMENTARYDEBATES (HANSARD) HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICIAL REPORT ORDEROFBUSINESS Deaths of Members ...........................................................................................................469 Afghanistan Motion to Take Note......................................................................................................469 Lords wishing to be supplied with these Daily Reports should give notice to this effect to the Printed Paper Office. No proofs of Daily Reports are provided. Corrections for the bound volume which Lords wish to suggest to the report of their speeches should be clearly indicated in a copy of the Daily Report, which, with the column numbers concerned shown on the front cover, should be sent to the Editor of Debates, House of Lords, within 14 days of the date of the Daily Report. This issue of the Official Report is also available on the Internet at https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2021-08-18 In Hybrid sittings, [V] after a Member’s name indicates that they contributed by video call. The following abbreviations are used to show a Member’s party affiliation: Abbreviation Party/Group CB Cross Bench Con Conservative DUP Democratic Unionist Party GP Green Party Ind Lab Independent Labour Ind SD Independent Social Democrat Ind UU Independent Ulster Unionist Lab Labour Lab Co-op Labour and Co-operative Party LD Liberal Democrat Non-afl Non-affiliated PC Plaid Cymru UKIP UK Independence Party UUP Ulster Unionist Party No party affiliation is given for Members serving the House in a formal capacity, the Lords spiritual, Members on leave of absence or Members who are otherwise disqualified from sitting in the House. © Parliamentary Copyright House of Lords 2021, this publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament licence, which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/. 469 Arrangement of Business [18 AUGUST 2021] Afghanistan 470 House of Lords debate, I want to echo the words of the Lord Speaker in sending our condolences to the families and friends Wednesday 18 August 2021 of those killed in Plymouth last week. Investigations are ongoing, but we will learn every possible lesson from The House met in a hybrid proceeding. the tragedy. 11 am It is clear to us all that the situation in Afghanistan is extremely grave and exceptionally concerning. The Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Peterborough. number of your Lordships taking part in this debate demonstrates how seriously this House takes the situation, and my noble friend Lord Ahmad and I look forward Arrangement of Business to hearing today’s contributions. We are fortunate to Announcement have across the House a wealth of expertise in diplomacy, defence, human rights—particularly in relation to women 11.07 am and girls—international aid and development, and The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith): My some Members of the House have very personal Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now experience of Afghanistan. I pay tribute to all who begin. Some Members are here in the Chamber while have served there during the past 20 years, including of others are participating remotely, but all Members will course our staff and noble Lords. We remember in be treated equally. The social distancing requirements particular the 457 British troops who tragically lost in the Chamber have been removed, but I strongly their lives and all those who sustained injuries, some encourage Members to continue to wear face coverings of which were life-changing. while in the Chamber except when speaking and to At this difficult time, it is important to remember respect social distancing in relation to the staff in the why we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Our Chamber. primary objective, when NATO invoked Article 5 of I begin by recalling the shocking and tragic incident its treaty for the first time in its history and the United that took place in Plymouth on 12 August. I know that Kingdom and others joined America in deploying, I speak for the whole House when I extend our thoughts was to ensure that Afghanistan was not used as a base and condolences to the loved ones of those who lost for international terrorism and to do whatever we their lives and to the whole community of Keyham. could to stabilise the country. We succeeded in that I place on record our continued thanks to the police core mission: there has not been a successful international and emergency services, which work tirelessly to keep terrorist attack on the West mounted from Afghanistan us safe, and to those members of the public who displayed since, terrorist training camps in the mountains were courage and bravery when helping the victims and their destroyed and al-Qaeda plots against this country were families. foiled. As the Lord Speaker rightly said, we should be I also place on record today, as we gather to discuss immensely proud of the role that our Armed Forces, the situation in Afghanistan, our gratitude to all the diplomats and development specialists have played in service personnel of this country who have died, been supporting Afghanistan over the past 20 years. injured and risked their lives during this conflict. As noble Lords will know, the main combat phase of our mission ended in 2014, when we brought the Deaths of Members great majority of our troops home and handed over Announcement responsibility for security to the Afghans themselves. Since then, conflict unfortunately continued and significant 11.09 am parts of the country remained contested or under Taliban control. After two decades, the Americans The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith): My have now taken their long-predicted step of a final Lords, I regret to inform the House of the deaths of extraction of their forces. We looked at many options, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, on 2 August and including the potential for staying longer ourselves, of the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, on 15 August. On finding new partners or even increasing our presence, behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the but, like all our NATO allies, we believed that it was noble Lords’ families and friends. not feasible from the position we were in. Since 2009, America has deployed 98% of all weapons released Afghanistan from NATO aircraft in Afghanistan and, at the peak Motion to Take Note of the operation, 90,000 of the 132,000 troops on the ground were American. The West could not continue 11.09 am this mission without American logistics and US air power. Moved by Baroness Evans of Bowes Park Countries around the world are now grappling with That this House takes note of the situation in the enormity of this situation and we must adapt Afghanistan. quickly. We have worked at speed to develop five strands to our approach. Our first and immediate The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Evans of Bowes Park) focus must be on helping those to whom we have (Con): My Lords, I thank everyone participating today direct obligations, including UK nationals together and all the parliamentary staff who have enabled us to with those Afghans who have assisted our efforts over meet at such short notice. Before I turn to today’s the past 20 years. We do not know what the next few 471 Afghanistan [LORDS] Afghanistan 472 [BARONESS EVANS OF BOWES PARK] Fourthly, we need to ensure that there are safe and days or weeks will hold, but we are working intensively legal routes for those most in need. The Prime Minister within government and with our international partners has confirmed today that, in addition to those Afghans to do everything in our power to get them out of who have worked with us directly, we are committing Afghanistan safely. We are deploying an additional to relocate another 5,000 this year through a new,bespoke 800 British troops on the ground to support the evacuation resettlement scheme focusing on the most vulnerable, operation and I can assure the House that this will particularly women and children. We will keep this continue for as long as conditions at the airport allow—at under review over future years, with the potential of the moment they are stable in comparison to some accommodating up to 20,000 over the long term. of the terrible scenes that we saw over the weekend Finally, we must face the reality of the change in and earlier this week. It is an extremely difficult task in regime. In the past three days, the Prime Minister has the current circumstances and I know that the whole spoken with the NATO and UN Secretaries-General House will join me in paying tribute to the bravery and with President Biden, Chancellor Merkel, President and commitment of our ambassador, Sir Laurie Macron and Prime Minister Khan. We have been clear Bristow, our commander on the ground, Brigadier that it would be a mistake for any country to recognise Dan Blanchford, and the entire British team in Kabul, the new Government in Kabul prematurely or bilaterally. who have been working round the clock saving hundreds Instead, those countries that care about Afghanistan’s of lives every day. future should set common conditions about the conduct So far, we have secured the safe return of 306 UK of the new regime before deciding together whether to nationals, while 2,052 Afghan nationals have been recognise it and on what terms. We will judge this regime resettled as part of our programme and a further based on the choices that it makes—on its attitude to 2,000 applications have been completed, with many terrorism, crime and narcotics, as well as humanitarian more being processed. We are actively seeking those access, the rights of women and in particular the rights who we believe are eligible but are as yet unregistered.