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Escape of Taliban Prisoners

I am grateful for the tone and the nature of the right hon. Gentleman's questions, which mirror almost exactly the questions that we in the Department are asking. It is barely a day after the event, and the answers to his questions lie a little way in the future, but in fairness I must deal with them. It is indeed crucial to find out who has escaped. Record keeping is not such that we can be supplied with a list immediately. It is a matter of huge concern to us to find out exactly who escaped, and their positions in the seniority of the Taliban. Estimates of who has been recaptured already vary. There are some estimates as low as 25 and others as high as 60, but we do not know. Again, it is just too early to find out, but we need to do that. The investigation into what happened will cover not only what has changed as a result of events but, as I indicated to my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), what might be done in the future to make these places more secure. The right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) made extremely good points about intelligence gathering. Again, we have not yet had the reports on what might have been picked up, but plainly it was not accurate enough to enable the escape to be prevented, or on threat levels to us, but those are at the top of our agenda. What the incident demonstrates clearly is that in the process of working with Afghan authorities in the essential job that they do—taking responsibility for their own country, its security, its prison system and its justice system—it is vital for our engagement and the engagement of others to continue. Kandahar, the area concerned, is not the direct responsibility of the United Kingdom. Another nation is responsible for the provincial reconstruction team working with the authorities there, including the prison authorities. Of course the incident is a huge setback, but it demonstrates why we continue to need to be engaged as much as any reason to say no, there should be no further engagement. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will join me, and the rest of the House, in saying that the work must continue and lessons must be learned every time there is an incident in order to prevent it happening again, but ultimately Afghanistan must be responsible for its own security under a proper political process initiated by the Afghans themselves and supported by the international community.