Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with his Iraqi counterpart on the safety and security of internally displaced people returning to Bartella.

The UK strongly supports the safe, voluntary and sustainable return of internally displaced Iraqis to the areas liberated from Daesh, including in the Nineveh Plains. Both the Prime Minister and other Ministers discussed these issues with the President of Iraq during his visit to the UK in June and I also discussed them with the Iraqi Foreign Minister, Mohammad Al-Hakim, on 25 June. We have contributed £23.15 million to the UN's Funding Facility for Stabilisation to help the Government of Iraq rebuild communities in liberated areas to enable further voluntary returns of displaced persons. We have not made a recent specific assessment of the level of employment opportunities for internally displaced people returning to towns on the Nineveh Plains.