Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I am conscious that there is huge interest in this debate and I really do want to make some progress.

We are working closely with Afghanistan’s neighbours to ensure safe passage through those countries. My right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, the then Foreign Secretary, visited Pakistan after Qatar and saw for himself the situation at Torkham on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. He also had discussions with the Foreign Ministers of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran.

Our diplomacy is paying off. Over the weekend, we helped to secure safe passage for Afghan nationals, including the staff of the Nowzad animal welfare charity, which I know is of huge interest both to hon. Members and the British people more widely, after they made their way to the border. We also dispatched a rapid deployment team comprising 23 staff to the region last week to support our embassies in processing those cases, which goes to the point raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) about where they would be processed. Those cases will be processed wherever is most appropriate, although the main ambassadorial team which served in Afghanistan is currently based in Doha. We are sending further rapid deployment teams to bolster those efforts, with additional staff being sent to Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Members on both sides of the House are fighting the corner for deserving Afghans whom we want to save. The Minister has just said that the Nowzad animal charity staff, who were not ARAP people and not British citizens, have been given safe passage, having got to the border. Does that mean that the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is now up and running, because we have all got good cases that qualify just as much as those worthy people do for immediate help and rescue?

[James Cleverly]

I will address that point shortly.

In addition to that deployment of staff, we are providing £30 million to Afghanistan’s neighbours to provide lifesaving support for refugees. Meanwhile—this touches on the point my right hon. Friend mentions—the Home Office is currently in the process of fully launching the resettlement programme, providing a safe and legal route to the UK for up to 20,000 Afghans in the region.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

That harrowing account by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) puts me in mind of what happened to my family in Nazi-occupied Poland for 20 months during the second world war, when they could come out from a bunker under a barn only at night, to be fed by the Polish family who risked their lives to save them. This debate ought to be about what the Scottish National party spokesman, the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith), rightly summarised when he said, “Get people out and keep people safe.” That is why I am a little disappointed that I do not feel that I can concentrate on cases such as the ones I have raised before, those of the 16 academics being supported by the Council for At-Risk Academics. These people have places—visiting fellowships and research studentships—in British universities. A dozen of them are still in Afghanistan, three of them have made it to Pakistan and one has even made it to the Netherlands, preparatory to coming here. I do not feel that I can concentrate on that because, unfortunately, the Opposition motion is framed in terms of setting up a:

“Joint Committee to Investigate Withdrawal from Afghanistan”

I am reading from the Annunciator there.

With the greatest respect to the Opposition, may I say that that was a mistake? Late last month, it was announced on the website of the Intelligence and Security Committee—that is the hat I now have to wear—that we had

“requested from the Government any intelligence assessments which covered the outlook for the regime with regards to the final withdrawal of US and coalition forces from Afghanistan”.

When such assessments are received, we shall consider them carefully and then determine any future action to take. Until that has happened, the ISC will not be commenting on what such intelligence may contain, as it is not our role to prejudge the situation on the basis of media speculation and in the absence of primary factual material.

In recent months, the official Opposition have been very supportive of the right of the ISC to fulfil its role, set out in statute and in an associated memorandum of understanding, as the only Committee of parliamentarians cleared and equipped properly to deal with highly-classified intelligence material. If other Committees seek to do this, they will, for a start, require secure premises and specially vetted staff comparable to our own. There are very good reasons for safeguarding the role of the ISC against such interference, and they were spelled out in detail and strongly supported by the Opposition parties during the lively debates in both Houses on the National Security and Investment Bill. Colleagues will be relieved to know that I do not propose to reiterate those arguments today, but the argument for letting the ISC get on with its work steadily and objectively, without being undercut by other bodies not equipped to do it, is as irrefutable now as it was when it was deployed in the context of that Bill earlier this year.

It is entirely up to Select Committee Chairmen to decide whether they want to mount a joint inquiry or join a Joint Committee, but what cannot be part of any such joint inquiry is the adoption by another Committee of the ISC’s raison d’être: namely, scrutiny of the activities of the intelligence community and the classified material on which those activities were based.

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution and for the advice he has given me about cases. On intelligence and security, one of my constituent’s relatives is in Afghanistan. He worked for the intelligence services and has information on intelligence and the armed forces here, but he has not been supported to leave Afghanistan and is now being sought by the Taliban because of what and who he knows. What is the right hon. Gentleman’s view on how we should handle that situation from the point of view of our own security?

[Dr Lewis]

I would have thought that it should come within the compass of the existing Government schemes to classify someone, providing the Government can satisfy themselves that what that person says he has to offer is genuine, and to activate a plan to take advantage of any real intelligence material that someone in that position might be able to offer. Unfortunately, of course, as a result of the chaotic departure that has been forced on America’s allies by successive American Presidents, the wherewithal to secure the safety of anybody inside Afghanistan, and particularly someone whom the Taliban are actively hunting, will be very difficult through any overt scheme. It would have to be done by some form of covert means, on which I hope the Government are working but on which I would not expect them to comment publicly.

To conclude, the position is perfectly clear, according to law, and we shall continue, gently but firmly, to hold the Government and the intelligence agencies properly to account.