Mr. Ellwood had a distinguished career in the Royal Green Jackets. I welcome the practical military experience that he brings to development work. He described for us the roads and the lack of access to markets. We should listen to that detail.

I offer the hon. Gentleman and Mr. Soames about nine-tenths of my support with regard to the question about Helmand. I do not perhaps share the view of DFID expressed by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East. I would be disappointed if I felt that there was an anti-military ethos in DFID or in the NGOs. We have completed about half a dozen reports in the past few years on conflict resolution and the relationship between development workers and the military.

My experience of dealing with people in the military-I have visited places such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sierra Leone and other African countries-is that they are very subtle thinkers who are asking development questions, which is reflected in the hon. Gentleman's speech. I welcome that. I do not want people to dismiss the military as though they were just gun toters holding the line. They think through such questions. At the same time, people in the military have to ask questions such as, "What is DFID doing? What can it do best? How does it best deliver with its own particular skills, experiences and abilities?"

When I was first elected to the House, Afghanistan was the poorest country in the world. It was at the bottom of every indicator: economic, health, education and life expectancy. We forget how far back Afghanistan was. Afghanistan poses a three-cornered problem: the security, military and violent conflict problem; the development problem; and the problem of poppy cultivation, production and distribution. That third factor makes the situation in Afghanistan different from that in Sierra Leone and Iraq, and that is why we need to focus on it.

As a jibe at the hon. Gentleman, I have to say that I recall campaigning for Lord Baker, who was in charge of urban development programmes, to say that we should help to fund mosques in Britain to win hearts and minds-the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex was a Minister at the time. The Conservative Government seemed to be opposed to that and also to giving mosques charity relief like Christian churches. If we had started down that road 30 years ago, we might have a slightly different problem in Britain now. The mosques are about hearts and minds. I am not sure whether DFID should be building them, but the whole cultural question is about development.

In the moments that I have left, I want to focus on a particular part of the report. I do not want to tackle the security issues; I just want to park them and say that I do not dismiss them. I want to focus on the deadly serious issue of drug trafficking. About 90 per cent. of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan. Drug availability is perhaps the most serious issue in my constituency. Heroin is killing people in the streets around me. Unless we tackle the development and security issues in Afghanistan and the issue of poppy cultivation, people in my constituency will die. I know that people serve in the military and die, but many in my constituency die of heroin. We must get a grip on heroin and hard drugs, because they are killing people in our constituencies.

Let me focus on a few paragraphs in the report that relate to poppy cultivation, drug trafficking, crop eradication and alternative livelihoods. The report said that the majority of farmers surveyed reported that

"they would be ready to stop poppy cultivation if access to alternative livelihoods was available."

In fact, the Select Committee was told that, if a farmer was told that 50 per cent. of his field was to be destroyed, he would simply plant 50 per cent. more poppy. In addition, it found that eradication in 2007 mainly destroyed marginal fields and that deals were often struck between village elders and eradication teams that always resulted in the poorest farmers being targeted.

If we are to deal with poppy cultivation, we must adopt a new approach. We must tackle the issues and consider alternative livelihoods. In a sense, it is a micro-problem. What is the methodology of DFID and development thinkers that relates the eradication of the poppy with alternative livelihoods? Is it just words that are put together or is there really a strategy? The report says:

"A different approach is emerging which seeks to mainstream counter-narcotics into broader development policy. This involved moving away from small local projects and adjusting the focus of development programmes so that they take account of the impact of interventions in different sectors on opium poppy production. Thus alternative livelihoods would become a more integrated and holistic approach to rural livelihoods."

I say amen to that. Then we look at the Government's response, which says:

"We agree that eradication alone will not lead to a sustainable reduction in poppy cultivation. That is why the UK is investing significant resources to support a range of programmes under the Afghan Government's National Drugs Control Strategy, including on legal livelihoods"-

whatever that might mean-

"criminal justice and law enforcement, and communications. We also strongly agree that it is important to look at a number of measures of success in our counter-narcotics work, rather than focusing exclusively on acreage under poppy cultivation."

I vaguely assent to that. Then we go on to the welcome that it gives:

"We welcome the Committee's conclusion that insecurity"-

as the Chairman of our Committee spelled out-

"is a major driver of poppy cultivation... We agree that strengthening alternative livelihoods is a long-term agenda that needs to be taken forward in an integrated and holistic way."

I cannot wait another 30 years in my constituency, because young kids are dying of heroin addiction. We must get a grip on the problem, and quickly. We have to make a sense of those words "integrated and holistic". I wrote in the margins of my copy, "We need to know what they mean, how they might work and what an integrated and holistic strategy looks like." I have to tell the Minister that I am not yet convinced that development experts or DFID are yet there.

I want to make a couple of suggestions. Yes, 20 provinces are poppy free. The question is one of controlling traffic and all the rest of it. It is that relationship between alternative production and poppy control that needs more focus. Let me give an example. Opposition Members have referred to USAID working with the military. Well, they may not know that USAID follows quite a protectionist policy, set by the US Government, and that protectionist policy blocks access to certain crops and seeds that the US Government see as being in competition with their own crops back home in America. In other words, there is a restriction on what seeds and crops the Afghans can grow, because of protectionist agricultural policies in America. That is why the Afghans cannot buy the seeds. If there is a restriction on alternative crops and seeds, yes, they will grow melons, because they cannot grow other more productive crops. That is part of the problem that needs addressing by the international community, because protectionist US agricultural policies, backed up by agribusiness, deny access to crops that would knock out the poppy but would also inevitably compete in a world marketplace.

I would just like to give another example that may be worth looking at. The other most difficult place in the world is probably Colombia, where of course all the cocaine comes from. The same issue applies; how do we deal with security and the cultivation of coca? I simply want to say to the Minister and to DFID through him that there are strategies for alternative livelihoods and those are whole-village strategies, as they call them in Colombia. They are not run by the Government or DFID, but usually by local communities or churches, as part of whole-regional strategies.

Those strategies relate to points made by my hon. Friend Dr. Blackman-Woods. I think that she read out a letter or referred to the remarks of the visitors from Afghanistan who came here. They said that they wanted better health care, schools, roads and the ability to grow vegetables and to build carpet and rug factories in their country. That is exactly what was said in Colombia. Let us adopt an integrated village approach, so that we tackle all those problems in a co-ordinated way, and we might then have a vision of what a holistic, integrated alternative livelihood strategy might be. Simply saying, "Can we plant one set of seeds that are different? And you are not allowed to plant the seeds that would really get you to the marketplace and make you money," is not a strategy. That is where the whole process seems to me to be falling down now. Can we make sense of that? In a sense, it is a question of the methodology of the development thinkers and activists. Can they actually think out a strategy that makes sense of that integrated holistic thinking? What are those alternative livelihoods?

I had the great privilege to travel across Afghanistan with a Member of the House of Lords, John Sentamu-the Archbishop of York, as he now is-who went across Afghanistan all the way to Herat. What I got from that trip was a strong sense of village and local community. We need viable, sustainable local communities that are economic communities. So that means, yes, providing economic development but also providing schools-I agree with Malcolm Bruce on that-and clinics and, indeed, mosques altogether in a village, so that the villagers have some sense of longer-term development for themselves and their kids. Unless those seeds are sown, the conflict will go on and on.

As the right hon. Member for Gordon, who chairs our Committee, has pointed out many times, agriculture has been neglected for a generation as a factor in development. However, agriculture should not be seen as just one element; it must be seen as an integrated community question in development. I say that because even though half the world's population now live in cities, the other half live in rural areas, and this issue is about village support and life. That is probably more true of Afghanistan than other countries.

I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to get to the World Bank. The World Bank is a factor that has not been mentioned. I was tempted to interrupt the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East and say, "You know, the mosque building should be part of the World Bank strategy, actually. It should be part of the pattern to have the World Bank working with the military."

John Battle (Leeds West, Labour)

I certainly will; the hon. Gentleman was generous enough to give way to me, so I will give way to him.

John Battle (Leeds West, Labour)

I am almost tempted to say that I welcome the way in which the World Bank evokes the almost Pavlovian response that we are faffing around, as soon as it is mentioned, because it takes so long for things to happen. That applies not just to the World Bank, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point: the time gap could cost lives and not just the lives of soldiers; it can cost the lives of the people in Afghanistan itself and the lives of the people in my constituency who are dying of heroin. So it is important that we shorten some of those distances and bring people together, to have more direct strategies. That is why I welcome to some extent the "Bournemouth, East" strategy-if I can call it that-because there is a practical intent of marching down the road and getting there, rather than discussing it forever. I take that point.

I am not convinced, however, that we have had-what was it?-the strategies and poverty reduction reports from the World Bank. I am not sure whether the World Bank is sharp enough yet, whether it really understands development yet and whether it understands development in a conflict situation, which is the situation in most of Africa, where the World Bank is supposed to be working. I do not think that the World Bank has got it yet.

Perhaps this spark of a focus on Afghanistan might lead us to ask some deeper questions, which is why I welcome the report. I respect the way in which Opposition Members have raised these issues. We need to ask some deeper and more pertinent questions and inject a sense of urgency into the debate that might push development thinking, as well as military thinking, for the future.

We do not have an international Government to walk in and out of places and sort out the Zimbabwes and the problem countries. We must try to get it together. However, at some point, we must get practical action on the ground, or we will continue to dribble away. It is people's blood that dribbles away in the end, while we sit round commentating on it and we spend every Prime Minister's Question Time regretting another death. I do not want to spend the rest of my days in this place, including every Prime Minister's Question Time, having a count of the people who have died trying to solve these problems. We must take more serious action, and with some more urgency.

To close on this issue, local people need to get a sense of local economic community development. We should experiment with that development in Afghanistan and get the agencies, NGOs, DFID and the World Bank to push for that. The people in Afghanistan need markets and connections to get goods to and from those markets, and not cobbled roads, as Sir Robert Smith pointed out. They need practical answers and a range of economic options. That is also the way that we will tackle drugs on our streets, in our own towns and neighbourhoods. By ensuring that there is local economic and social development as well as political and security development in Afghanistan, we will solve some of the problems here in Britain as well. So the debate-and the report-perhaps ought to be taken rather more seriously than just taking place at the back end of the day, on a wet Thursday afternoon.