Afghan Relocations: Special Forces

Debate between James Heappey and David Davis

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I know that the hon. Gentleman, who has been advocating for some cases and is as passionate about the matter as anybody, will feel aggrieved, as will many colleagues around the House. The responsibility of any Minister is to own any failure of process that happens in their Department, and I accept that responsibility.

The reality is that these are very difficult decisions to make. The hon. Gentleman said that the Triples were funded by the UK Government. That is not entirely accurate; they were funded as a donor alongside many other donors, into the Government of Afghanistan, who funded the units. As he will well know from colleagues on his own Benches who commanded units that worked closely with the Triples, top-up payments were made in order to generate loyalty and, frankly, to avoid the Triples being poached by other coalition partners, which had similar forces of their own.

The records of those top-up payments were very ad hoc. I take my responsibilities for accuracy to the House seriously, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman in all seriousness that we have looked for employment records and none of those ad hoc records of additional payments is available to us. We have spoken to colleagues who have experience of these matters in the House and beyond, to ask for any records that they have, but even then a lot of the records produced are those that are put together by charities advocating for the Triples, rather than contemporary records of those top-up payments.

The reality is that whatever the challenges have been, some decisions were made in an inconsistent way. That is why they must be reviewed. We will aim to get the review done as quickly as possible—we anticipate that it will take around 12 weeks. Before that, we need to put in place the people who will do the review, who will be independent of everything that has gone before. In the first instance, it will be a review of the robustness of the decisions themselves, and where it finds that decisions were not robust, we will, of course, seek new information both from the applicant and from colleagues in the House who have advocated for them.

The shadow Minister makes some good points about what this means for people who are in Pakistan. It is impossible to say who, of those who were not already in the pipeline as approved applicants, has been deported. We do not track that, so I cannot answer his specific question but, of course, we will alert the Government of Pakistan to those who are included within the review, so that they can enjoy the same protection from deportation as those who have already been approved and are awaiting their onward move to the UK.

The shadow Minister necessarily points to the politics and the alleged disagreement among Conservative Members —that is the nature of his role—but I am simply not motivated by such things. The reality is that we are trying our best to bring as many people to the UK from Afghanistan as possible. Some decisions are relatively straightforward, because we hold the employment records, but others are far more complicated. Although there have undoubtedly been some decisions that are not robust and need to be reviewed, I put on record that the people involved in making those decisions, across the MOD, have been working their hardest and doing their best. I stand up for their service and for what they have done, and I take responsibility for their shortcomings.

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I have been approached by people who were involved in training these soldiers—333, 444 and BOST 170—and they tell me that they are the most loyal, bravest and most effective soldiers who were operating in Afghanistan. As a result, they are the soldiers the Taliban feared the most, which I guess is why the Taliban have been executing them in front of their families whenever they catch them.

The Minister rightly says that we owe them a debt of gratitude, but this is more than that. It is a debt of honour. Can we ensure that, both in our administration and in our relationship with Pakistan, we do everything to deliver on that debt of honour as quickly as possible?

[James Heappey]

We certainly will. It is important to mention that the Government of Pakistan have often been the subject of questions in relation to ARAP over the past year or so. In my experience, they have been incredibly co-operative. We are hugely grateful to them for that.

The limit on the speed of flow is not any problem with the Government of Pakistan, but the challenge of getting people out of Afghanistan. The reality is that, no matter how many decisions we review and no matter how many additional people we add as eligible for the scheme, there is a limit to how fast we can move people over the border into Pakistan. That will take time.