Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many officials in his Department are fluent in (a) Dari and (b) Pashto; and if he will make a statement.

The British Embassy in Kabul has approximately 160 local staff, many of whom speak Dari or Pashto as their native language. We also have a small number of UK-based roles in Kabul where we train incumbents to speak Dari or Pashto.