Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:22 am on 10 May 2007.
Lord Drayson
Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Defence Equipment and Support)
11:22,
10 May 2007
My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord the precise breakdown. If we have those figures I will write to him. As he highlights, there has been a real increase in effort by the United States. The primary coalition responsibility for the development of the Afghan national police has been with Germany. It has been recognised that that needs to be supported by an acceleration of new approaches to the training of Afghan police more quickly. That has led to the United States putting extra resources into this area. We recognise the importance of the development—as the noble Lord, Lord Astor, said—of the police and the army in order to provide the governance that this country is going to need to allow us to hand over responsibility for security. In terms of the balance of resources, our focus is on supporting, training and developing the army, not the police. Whether we will change that focus is not something I am aware of at present.