Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Western Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

2. What progress his Department has made in helping to ensure that girls around the world have access to 12 years of quality education.

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to help ensure that girls receive a quality education throughout the world.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

Ensuring 12 years of quality education for all girls is a British Government priority. We run bilateral education programmes in 19 countries, and our girls’ education challenge programme is supporting 1.6 million girls to secure a quality education.

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[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady is entirely right; those two specific targets were a major priority for the UK G7 presidency in 2021. Prioritising foundational learning—reading, writing and counting well—is at the heart of that. We are on track to achieve both targets by the date agreed at the G7.

[Andrew Western]

Since the fall of Kabul, some 850,000 girls have been prevented from attending school by the Taliban. Recently, pupils at St Matthew’s C of E Primary School in Stretford undertook a whole-school march in solidarity with the plight of Afghan girls denied an education. They have done all they can to raise awareness of this important issue. What more does the Minister believe his Government can do to raise awareness of this ongoing travesty? Crucially, will he agree to bring forward a comprehensive Afghanistan strategy that takes into account the ongoing crackdown on the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan?

[Mr Mitchell]

I congratulate the school in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency on that public-spirited statement about the rights of women and the appalling violations that are taking place in Afghanistan. The Taliban are not a monolith in Afghanistan; there are parts of the country in which education is taking place at both a primary and a secondary level for girls. It is the job of the international community to try to persuade and argue with the Taliban Administration that what is happening in those areas should be extended across the whole country.