Afghanistan

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been one of the most active and most assiduous Members of this House in championing the cause of her constituents and others who may be trying to get access to the scheme. It has been over four years since the ARAP scheme was first established, and there are still 22,000 ARAP applicants whose applications will be processed. Where eligibility is established, they will be offered the relocation that this country has undertaken to give them. Those applicants need not have applied from Afghanistan, but many did so. From the outset, one of the most important features of the ARAP scheme—given that the Taliban had taken over in Afghanistan—was that it applied to female Afghans who formerly worked alongside our own forces and even served in the Afghan forces alongside our own, who have potentially been at greatest risk. For them, the offer to relocate to this country, and to rebuild and re-establish a life here, has been very important.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)]

I commend the Secretary of State for the calm and sensible way in which he has announced the change in Government policy today. I can already announce to the House that, since the briefing earlier today, I have made preliminary arrangements for MOD officials to address the Public Accounts Committee to examine the cost implications. Some £400 million has been spent so far, and I think the Secretary of State said in parentheses that another £400 million will be spent on the 600 people currently based in Afghanistan who have received invitations under the scheme. Can he give me and the House an assurance that if those 600 people, who must be in some danger, do need assistance, it will be rapidly provided?

[John Healey]

The hon. Gentleman is very fast off the mark, and I am glad that he has already issued his invitation to his Committee. He is asking for figures as Chair of the PAC. The cost of what has been spent and committed in order to get in transit to Britain the 900 principals eligible under ARR, plus their immediate family members, is around £400 million. For the remaining members of the ARR and their immediate families who have been issued invitations, we expect something similar again. But because of the policy decisions that we have been able to announce and the changes that we have been able to make to the programmes we inherited—he may want to probe this with his Committee—it means that the taxpayer should be paying £1.2 billion less over the next few years, and that around 9,500 fewer Afghans will come to this country.