Afghan Relocations: Special Forces

Debate between Christine Jardine and James Heappey

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I am grateful for the constructive engagement that the hon. Gentleman has had with the Department ever since the evacuation from Kabul. Our meeting the other day was most instructive, and much of what he said caused us to reflect in the way that we have done. He should take much credit for that.

We are working at pace—the hon. Gentleman has my assurance that we will continue to do so, but we have been doing so all along. This is an incredibly difficult process that is consuming ever larger amounts of horsepower within the Department, and rightly so, because we owe these people a debt. However, as has come up previously at Defence questions, we must be careful not to set the expectation among our partner forces that everywhere that the UK armed forces operate, now and in the future, there will be an immigration angle to such partnering. I accept that there is reputational damage to the MOD and that has an effect on my reputation, too—that is right; that is ministerial accountability—but I push back gently against the idea that it will have an impact on the willingness of partner forces to work with us. I do not think it is helpful if partner forces think the reward for working with us is a visa: that does not work at all.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I appreciate the Minister’s comments and his commitments today, but it is more than two years since the chaos of the collapse of the operation in Afghanistan and this surely has come much too late. There are still many people—not just the Triples, but interpreters and people who worked alongside the forces—trapped in countries that are hostile and threatening them with transportation back to Afghanistan. Can he commit today to ensuring, with some urgency, that all cases are looked at quickly and speedily, and that we get as many people to safety as possible?

[James Heappey]

The cases are being looked at urgently. In the wider ARAP cohort that the hon. Member described, that process has been much easier. Some time ago, I directed the excellent officials who work on this, instead of working through the pile of applications, to go to the employment records we hold for interpreters and other locally employed civilians, and to focus on finding them in the pile of applications rather than going through all the applications that may be spurious or less credible. We will do so as quickly as we can, but it takes time, and even once eligibility decisions have been taken, if people are undocumented, and many of the ARAP cohort are, it is incredibly challenging to get them out of Afghanistan and into a safe country, and that limits our rate of flow enormously.

On those in other third countries, we do all that we can through the excellent staff in our embassies and high commissions to facilitate their movement out of those countries. However, there are some countries with whom we have quite challenging diplomatic relationships, particularly at the moment, and that makes it particularly difficult. That does not mean that we do not keep trying, and I am very grateful to our ambassadors and high commissioners for their efforts, but, fundamentally, we cannot tell sovereign countries what to do.