Afghan Resettlement Update

Debate between Johnny Mercer and Stuart C McDonald

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady has not had a response; I will look into that directly after this session. I am more than happy to meet at her earliest convenience to talk about these issues. I do not think I have ever said that this is easy or will be a simple project to achieve. It is incredibly complex. We have taken around 24,500 Afghans out of Afghanistan since Op Pitting. That is a huge number of people to push into an already overcrowded housing market. They now have the most generous offer this country has ever made in the private rented sector, and they get an extraordinary amount of assistance.

I pay tribute to all the Home Office liaison officers and those working at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities who are on the frontline every day, trying to house Afghan families in United Kingdom society. I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady to go over those details with her. Where local authorities engage with central Government and my team, we are having huge success, and I encourage her to do the same.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

This is a difficult process, so it is inevitable that there will be significant numbers of Afghans who struggle to find accommodation in time. How will they be supported to make homelessness applications or to present as homeless? Will there be somebody physically evicting people from hotels when the time comes, and if so, who, and what will then happen to the Afghans and their belongings?

[Johnny Mercer]

Central Government will stop paying for these hotels when the eviction notice runs out. There will then be extra homelessness funding for those who wish to present as homeless. There is £7,100 per family to help local authorities look after them and get them out of hotels or homeless accommodation and into the private rented sector.

I come back to this point. I have been to see some local authorities, and the No. 1 thing they have said to me is, “Can we keep the hotels open?” despite how bad that is for the Afghan families and the kids who are not going to school, and the challenges it poses in the community. We have to move these Afghans on. We have to get them into private rented accommodation. There is no reason why we cannot do that, and I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman in the months ahead to achieve that.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Johnny Mercer and Stuart C McDonald

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

I will not take too long in my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I wish to make a couple of clear points about foreign and Commonwealth service personnel who serve in our armed forces and then have to pay to live in this country afterwards, and to use public services. There has been wide, broad, and deep support for action on this issue over the past few days, including from people who really do not like to get involved in politics. Whether it is the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes and the veteran community or beyond, in our communities up and down the country, people recognise the morality behind the issue of charging those who serve to live in this country.

I speak to all sorts of people in the veterans community. Last night, I had a conversation with Prince Harry about this. He has contributed hugely to the veterans debate and I wanted his view. He said to me, “It’s not only morally right but would mean so much to those who have given so much.” That is not a political intervention; it demonstrates the moral purpose of this measure. It is an almost “effortless change”, as he said, for this Government to make, for us to finally see through what we have said to these people for so long. We owe it to them. They are our brothers and sisters. They have served with us over many years. I recognise that there are things going around today saying how we should not be doing this in primary legislation, for lots of reasons. I will come to that in a minute, but this has been going on for 20 years for these people, and at some point we have to grasp the nettle and make sure that we look after them.

The money is meaningless. I will address the figures that have been put out by the Government and others. On Monday, I was told that the Government could not do this because it would cost £160 million. That is garbage. Do not take my word for it; look at the Royal British Legion, which has campaigned on this issue for many years. I pay tribute to Members across the House, including those on the Conservative side, who have been Defence Ministers and have tried to deal with this problem but have hit the same issues we are hitting at the moment.

On that £160 million, the Royal British Legion has studied the figures. If someone who served in the military in this country applies for a visa, all their dependants use a special code. Someone can only use that code if they have served or they are a dependant, so we can pull the data between 2016 and 2020. It has never cost more than £1 million a year, so the majority of those fees are profit—a charge on our service personnel to stay here.

Let me address the consultation issue and the 12-year period. I do not want to air dirty linen in public, but I was there when that 12-year figure was decided on. It was done on a visit. It was plucked out of the air. There is no evidence whatsoever to back it up. There is evidence in the Department that someone from a foreign or Commonwealth country who serves in the military is likely to serve between six and seven years. Twelve years is well outside that. It is well beyond what our peer nations do, it is well beyond what our allies do, and it is incredibly unkind to these individuals who have worked and served for so long.

I have given the moral case and the financial case, but ultimately this decision comes down to Conservative Members. The whole country is aligned on this issue, and it has been for a very long time. All the political parties will support new clause 52 except the Conservatives, and we are the ones who made a promise that we would do something about this. That is unconscionable. Colleagues can of course take the calls from the Defence Secretary and others, with these figures that I have demonstrated are not true, or they can think about what they are here to do.

I am here to represent the Fijian family in Plymouth who left the military after nine years having fought in Afghanistan and Iraq; they may have been members of the United Kingdom Special Forces group—a relentless operational tempo. Finally they leave, their kids go to school and they save up for a house, but they have to pay a £10,000 bill to stay in this country that they fought for over so many years. Can colleagues really look that family in the eye and say, “No, you have to pay; we have to make a profit out of you for you to stay in this country, despite the fact that you were prepared to commit so much to the privileges and the freedoms we enjoy”?

Finally, I say to colleagues that the tide changes very quickly in politics. This issue has been around for 20 years now, and the tide changes. I know what it is like when people put the screws on and ask you to vote a certain way, but the tide changes. All we can do is what we think is right on the day. The moral and financial case for this measure has never been clearer, and I urge colleagues to consider it carefully before they cast their vote.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Rather than fixing the broken asylum system, the provisions in this part of the Bill risk breaking it all together, endangering, criminalising, delaying, warehousing, offshoring and depriving of their rights those who simply seek our protection. The Uyghur, the Syrian and the persecuted Christian I spoke about on Second Reading, as well as the Afghans who are now in danger because of events subsequent to that debate, all face those bleak impacts despite our best efforts in Committee.

Contrary to the claims that the Bill is about safe routes, it actually does not add a single one, while threatening to restrict vital family reunion rights, pushing more people towards smugglers and dangerous crossings.