Afghanistan

Debate between John Healey and Stella Creasy

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

We made a statement about the closure of the Home Office-run ARAP and ACRS on 1 July, and the hon. Lady will have had opportunities since then to raise those matters in the House. On the information to those who may be affected, we will honour the invitations that have been issued to 600 ARR individuals. To everyone else in the dataset, we have communicated the latest position this morning. We are offering access to further advice through the designated area of the gov.uk website, and that includes steps that individuals can take, if they wish, to get in touch with our information services centre, which has been set up by the MOD to deal with questions and concerns that people may have.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a very shocking story that the Secretary of State has told us today, and I pay tribute to him for his commitment to be transparent about it. Sadly, this comes as no surprise to many of us here and to those in our offices who, over that period of time, had to deal with hundreds of desperately distraught people ringing in to find out what might happen to their relatives. I have to be honest with the Secretary of State: this matter is not closed. I join the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in being desperately concerned that we still have people who would have qualified under these schemes, but who, because of failures like this, fled Afghanistan or tried to go to other countries. We tried to raise this issue with Ministers, but could not get meetings with them, and now we discover that there were secret schemes.

The Secretary of State will understand that, right now, MPs’ offices across this country will be hearing this and be worried that, again, they will get those phone calls and have those queries. He is right to say that there must be parliamentary scrutiny. Can he assure us that there will be additional resources to help us support our constituents who come forward and that he will keep an open mind that, even four years later, there will still be cases that are relevant to this scheme that should be heard—people who should be given sanctuary here—if we are to honour our debt to those people who kept our forces safe?

[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.

National Insurance Contributions Bill

Debate between John Healey and Stella Creasy

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

One of the two consequences of devolution is that in this area of health such decisions are taken in Wales for Wales. The second, however, is, I have to concede to the House, that I, as an English shadow Health Secretary do not follow those decisions in detail, so I think the hon. Gentleman is going to have to prosecute that argument in his home area.

Finally, the House will note that the date in the amendment is anticipated to be after the expected Royal Assent to the Bill, so it is tied to the Finance Act. The Exchequer Secretary might want to discuss with the Chancellor the idea of doing this assessment, publishing the report and highlighting the shortfall, showing the extent to which the promises they made to protect NHS funding and give it a real-terms increase in each year of this Parliament are being broken. The Budget, of course, provides the Chancellor’s opportunity to make good his word and make good the promises that his Government have given to the British people on the NHS.

[Dr Creasy]

I rise to speak to amendment 8, because it goes to the heart of the Bill and what we do in this House. We do not pass laws to raise money for no purpose. Clearly, we raise national insurance for social insurance purposes. Since 2003 there has been a hypothecated fund in our national insurance contributions specifically for funding the NHS, and the amendment addresses that. It is critical that we get the Bill right and that it reflects the important purpose that we attribute to national insurance. I note that, back in 2003, the then Opposition opposed such use of national insurance, but they have come a long way in the past seven years. That is why it is important to get the Bill right and make sure that the public can have confidence that when national insurance is levied, funding will go to national health care services. My first point concerns why that is important and why the NHS therefore needs the guarantee that amendment 8 would provide. Secondly, I will explain why the public have a reasonable expectation that such provision be made.