Afghanistan

Roger Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I do not have those details with me, but I am happy to provide them to the right hon. Gentleman after this statement. As he will be aware, we looked particularly at the issue of interpreters and, more broadly, local staff who are intimidated and at risk as a result of being part of our efforts to help bring security and stability to Afghanistan. We have a very thorough process for making sure that where there is extreme risk of intimidation we are able to take further steps that go beyond simply helping people get into different work in Afghanistan to potentially relocating them. What I propose to do is send him a short note updating him on what we are doing for interpreters, and the extent of progress and use of that scheme.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

Afghan electoral law requires a run-off election if no candidate achieves more than 50% in the presidential election. The run-off election has already been postponed and it has been suggested that it might not need to take place if one of the candidates can develop a majority coalition. Does the Secretary of State agree that the rule of law should prevail and the run-off election should take place? What can her Department do to ensure that that happens?

[Justine Greening]

We all want to make sure that the electoral process happens effectively, and I talked about the need for it to be fair, inclusive and transparent. DFID has done a huge amount of work with other donors supporting the United Nations programme to make sure that that can happen. We will all have to see what happens in the second round of the presidential election, but what we can say from the first round is that, basically, the process worked: most of the polling stations were open as planned; people were able to get to them and to cast their vote; and where there were complaints those are now being assessed by the complaints commission. That is a good first step but, as the hon. Gentleman points out, there are challenges ahead. We will continue to do what we can to make sure that those presidential elections are successful.