Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

In her statement on Monday, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said:

“Family members of British citizens or”

Afghans settled in the UK

“who do not qualify for the ACRS”—

the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme—

“can apply to come to the UK”—[Official Report, 13 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 685.]

under existing “family routes”. The majority of our cases, I suspect, are those family reunion cases. What priority will be given to those? She also said that

“we will not be able, therefore, to respond to colleagues with specific updates on individuals.”

Does that mean that the 160 letters that I am waiting for a reply to will not get any reply at all?

[James Cleverly]

I will come on to how we intend to inform Members about cases that they have raised with us. If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will address that.

We also repatriated an estimated 500 British nationals who left Afghanistan in accordance with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office travel advice when that was changed. In total, from April this year to August, we helped over 17,000 people get to safety. I pay tribute to the troops and civilian staff who helped to make that possible, and I pay tribute once again to all those who served in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, whether in the armed forces or in other roles.

In this next phase, we are working to secure safe passage for those British nationals and eligible Afghans who remain in the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), the then Foreign Secretary, visited Qatar two weeks ago to discuss efforts to re-establish flights from Kabul airport and the wider international approach to the Taliban. International flights have now started. We secured places for 13 British nationals on the first Qatari flight from Kabul on 9 September, and 21 British nationals were on the second flight the following day. We will continue this work to help evacuate British nationals via that route.

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[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

We have a large and thriving Afghan community in west London and I have been proud to get to know many of them in the past few decades as constituents and friends. Many came here because of persecution—because they are from the Hazara community—or because, frankly, they shared our values in terms of democracy and human rights, rather than the Taliban’s. I am afraid that the Government have let them down badly, from the intelligence failures that led to the rapid abandonment of Kabul, to the chaos—it was chaos—that ensued.

On the experience of MPs who have many Afghans in their constituencies, my young casework staff were working 24/7. They were traumatised because they were dealing with death—hearing about people being blown up and killed—or the real fear of death. All the time, all the work they were doing was going nowhere; it was going into a void, as we have heard. I can only say with any certainty that there were two families who got out of Kabul who would not have done so without our intervention, despite those hundreds of hours of effort. In one of those cases, four of us—I and three of my staff—were talking to different people at the same time to get the family on a plane. I was trying to get the FCDO to give them documentation. Somebody else was talking by WhatsApp. I absolutely praise what our armed forces did there, because they went out after the bomb to rescue people and bring them to the airport, only to find somebody from Border Force there telling them they could not get on the plane. It was completely surreal. That family got out. A member of that family and his brother have British citizenship because of the service they gave to us and the threat to their lives in Afghanistan. One of them got their family out and the other did not; they are still there. It was chaos, it was completely arbitrary and it was a disgrace, frankly.

Of the 162 cases I have had, I have had replies on four, one asking for more information and three saying “not eligible”. I have not even had answers to my earlier questions, one on the issue of family reunion—many of these are family reunion cases—and the other on whether we are going to get individual responses to those remaining inquiries, generic answers or nothing at all. I really want to know the answer to that.

Where we are now in this country? I found out—because no information was given to me—that 300 Afghans had been unceremoniously left at a quarantine hotel in Shepherd’s Bush and confined there after their quarantine period ended. Although some of them had legitimately put in homelessness applications, they were told by security staff, “Get on a coach and travel 300 miles to somewhere you’ve never heard of.” At the same time, another 100 Afghans were being put into a bridging hotel with no money and no assistance whatsoever. Were it not for the help of local charities such as West London Welcome and my council giving them emergency money, they would have no help whatsoever.

Something needs to be done, and done quickly, to sort this situation out. I am sick of listening to these statements from Ministers that tell us nothing and give us no further information, and no help or hope to the Afghans in our constituencies.