Afghanistan Policy

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I seem to recall that my right hon. Friend asked the Prime Minister a question along those lines last week. May I ask him to liaise with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay, in relation to those wider immigration questions? Again, that invitation is open to Members across the House. We want to help them with the cases, but, please, there must be understanding that we will not be able to help everyone and we will not be able to give specific updates on individual cases if they are in Afghanistan.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

The Minister has talked about the real difficulties facing those who wish to apply from Afghanistan, but having listened very carefully to what she has said today, there are two things that I am not clear about. First, the impression was previously given that if people could get to the border and leave Afghanistan, they should do so. I am not clear what she is saying today about that in terms of the latest Government advice.

Secondly, let me pick up the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the Chair of the Select Committee, has raised. All of us have been referring to the Home Office many, many cases relating to people who are in Afghanistan at the moment. Will they have to make a fresh application under the scheme that she has announced today, or will those details be read across and considered under the scheme automatically? It would greatly assist many Members on both sides of the House to know what is it that we should be doing. Can we say that we have sent the Minister the details, she has them and will consider them under the new scheme, or do those people have to apply afresh?

[Victoria Atkins]

In relation to the right hon. Gentleman’s first question about what people should be doing, I am trying to reflect the rapidly changing security situation in Afghanistan, so I would ask any Member of Parliament to consider very carefully whether they feel able to, or comfortable, giving people advice about moving to borders, because, with the best will in the world, we cannot hope to have the sort of information that, for example, those on the ground, those working with the armed forces and so on will have. The advice at the moment is to look at the gov.uk website. That is our primary source of information. We need to bear in mind, of course, that with anything we talk about, there is the potential that others are watching—bad actors and so on. Indeed, Members of Parliament should bear that in mind when it comes to their own correspondence; we heard the experiences of a colleague last week in relation to a fraudulent attempt.

Let me turn to the right hon. Gentleman’s second question, which was about the process. ARAP is organised by the Ministry of Defence, which has its lists of people and so on. With the citizens scheme, we are trying a blended approach. We want to use the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as we have done under the Syrian scheme, but we recognise that that only deals with people who are out of country in refugee camps, by and large. We also want to look at civil society. We are not proposing to open this up as an applications process, because there are 40 million people living in Afghanistan, and I suspect that the overwhelming majority of them feel pretty vulnerable for various reasons at the moment.

We will be working with international organisations, including non-governmental organisations, to invite people forward to the other two parts of the scheme. Bear in mind, of course, that some of the 500—[Interruption.] I suspect that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will get his moment. Some of the 500 or so people who have been evacuated under Operation Pitting may be eligible under this scheme. As I said, we are having to take this step by step, but we wanted to keep the House as updated as we could today, so that it is aware of the direction of travel.