Safe Asylum Routes: Afghan Refugees

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Robert Jenrick]

In a moment, I will come to the specific question around the numbers and how they relate to both British Council workers and GardaWorld employees. If time allows, I will come on to my hon. Friend’s question about the limiting factor of accommodation as well. Clearly, it is a significant challenge for us. The primary responsibility rests with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry of Defence in particular is responsible for bringing forward service family accommodation and ensuring that it is available and of a suitable quality, so that once families have been granted their visas, they can come to the UK safe in the knowledge that they will have somewhere to stay, rather than being housed in a hotel, which I think we all agree is an unsatisfactory way for anyone to live for a prolonged period and which we have consciously moved away from. My hon. Friend will have seen the effort to which the Government went in the first half of this year to close the hotels that were housing 8,000 Afghans who had arrived around the time of Operation Pitting.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Minister will be aware of the case, which I brought to his and the Secretary of State’s attention, of the gentleman who worked in the British Army alongside one of my constituents. He had to leave Afghanistan and live under threat in Pakistan with his wife and four children. We are keen to get him back to Northern Ireland—to Newtownards, to be specific. There is a job and house waiting for him; all we have to do is get him there, because he served our country. I gently remind the Minister that we still await a successful outcome for that gentleman.

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me make some progress, if I may, and I will return to those colleagues who wish to intervene. To address the hon. Member’s point, we sympathise deeply with the situation that many Afghans find themselves in, including those who are suffering because of their work in standing up for human rights and the rule of law, as well as those, such as women and girls and members of minority groups, who are facing wider persecution at the hands of the Taliban. Those are the reasons why we as a country have made the commitments that we have, and it is critical that we continue to deliver on those. The Government remain absolutely committed to the people of Afghanistan and the schemes that we established in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Kabul.

Since June 2021, around 24,600 people affected by events in Afghanistan have been brought to safety in the UK. They include British nationals and their families, Afghans who loyally served the UK and others identified as particularly at risk, such as campaigners for women’s rights, human rights defenders, journalists, judges and members of the LGBT+ community. The number includes 7,000 individuals brought to safety after Operation Pitting. Because of the various ways in which cohorts are defined, detailed international comparisons have to be made with some caution, but on most measures the figure is significantly more than the numbers brought to safety by many of our European neighbours. I stress that this is not just about the number of Afghans who have arrived in the UK, but about the manner in which we support those people in order to integrate them into the United Kingdom and ensure that they can begin to establish themselves here and lead fulfilling lives.