Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Heappey and Steve McCabe

Monday 15th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

1. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the timescales for processing applications to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme.

[The Minister for Armed Forces (James Heappey)]

The Ministry of Defence continues to process ARAP applications at pace, thanks to the recruitment of more caseworkers and improved systems and processes. In the first four months of 2023 we issued more than 12,200 eligibility decisions. We aim to process all outstanding initial applications by August 2023.

[Steve McCabe]

I have recently written to the Minister about a family still trapped in Afghanistan, whose case, I was told in January, was being processed by the MOD, but this is about more than a constituency case. The standing of our armed services is affected, and scandals such as the pilot threatened with Rwanda do not help. Does the Minister recognise that the shambles over our treatment of Afghan refugees is damaging the reputation of our military, with obvious implications for future operations?

[James Heappey]

I certainly do not recognise the connection that the hon. Gentleman has made. The offer made through ARAP, the scheme to bring to the UK Afghans who served alongside the UK armed forces and whose lives are now at risk as a consequence, is being honoured and continues to be a major line of effort by the MOD. We have had hundreds of thousands of applications, the vast majority of which have come from people who either served in the Afghan national forces—while their effort was heroic, they were never who ARAP was aimed at—or never had anything to do with the UK armed forces at all. Their desperation to leave their country is understandable, but the ARAP scheme is what it was always set up to be, the evacuation of those who served alongside the UK armed forces, and the MOD continues to put a lot of effort into delivering that. We will complete the processing of applications by this summer.