Afghan Women and Girls

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Westminster Hall

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

That is extremely kind of you, Mrs Latham.

I wish to make a single point, which I urge the Minister to take away. After the invasion of Ukraine, the Home Office set up a special unit on the parliamentary estate in Portcullis House staffed by knowledgeable and sympathetic Home Office civil servants, and it was possible for MPs to engage directly with them in support of particular cases of outstanding humanitarian worth. Why should we not reinstate that hub, which would make it easy for those of us who know of cases exactly like those just described by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) to feed them into the system, and would mean that there is no chance of them being delayed or ignored, and that there could be no prevarication? When we engage with the relevant officials directly, as we did over Ukraine, we get results. Why should we not help those people in Afghanistan, to whom we have a particular obligation, given that we were prepared to do that for those from Ukraine, towards whom we had fewer obligations but understandable sympathy?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

I thank the hon. Member for his important points. He also made important points about freedom of religion or belief, which he and I support very strongly. I was grateful for those.

In terms of engaging with NGOs, there are pathways to bring food and engage women and girls in that process with a limited number of NGOs, including the Red Cross and Red Crescent. We are doing everything we can to work within those pathways to do that, but this is far from ideal. We are not happy with the situation, and we want to find other ways, but at least there are some limited pathways.

While we are talking about the humanitarian situation, it is worth emphasising that more than 28 million Afghans—over half the population—are estimated to be in humanitarian need, with around 17.2 million suffering acute food insecurity. We are working very hard to find ways to get food to those individuals and support them. The UK remains one of the most generous donors to Afghanistan; since April 2021, we have spent over £530 million. Points have been made about the official development assistance budget. It is well known that our aim—the Government’s aim—is to return to 0.7% when the fiscal conditions allow.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the Taliban’s bans on women working for the UN and for NGOs. The UN described the ban on its staff as “unlawful” and it has been unanimously condemned by the UN Security Council. Those bans prevent humanitarian development aid from reaching Afghans, particularly women and girls, and threaten lives in communities dependent on that support, as highlighted by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The UK Government continue to provide support despite the bans, and we are working with allies and countries in the region to put pressure on the Taliban to reverse them. The goal for the aid we provide is to ensure that 50% of those reached are women and girls. We achieved that in 2021-22 and are on track to do so again in the last financial year, despite the bans that we have all called out.

Afghanistan is the only country in the world to ban women from secondary and higher education. It is a genuinely extraordinary step. As a parent of four children—two young men and two young women—it is clear to me, along with millions of others in this country, that that is unfair, economically and socially ignorant and completely self-defeating. We know from our consultations with Afghan women, including those in Afghanistan, that educating their sons and daughters is their No. 1 priority. It is key to lifting families out of entrenched poverty and insecure, low-skilled labour.

We support education provision in Afghanistan through our financial contributions to NGOs, UN partners and the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, Education Cannot Wait and the Global Partnership for Education. We will continue to use every diplomatic and development lever at our disposal to restore girls’ rights to education. We are working with close allies, regional powers and through the UN to press the Taliban to allow girls back into classrooms. In December, we used the Bali international conference on Afghan women’s education to urge regional partners to speak on behalf of Afghan women and girls.

Important points were made by the hon. Member for North East Fife about the breadth of engagement with NGOs. We have had a range of consultations with Afghan women over the past year, both those in Afghanistan and here in the UK. We engage with NGOs in regular meetings with the British and Irish Agencies Afghanistan Group and we organise consultations with local organisations as well on specific thematic issues, such as education, health and livelihoods. We will continue to take forward that engagement. We also allocated £17 million to support regional countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan, in 2021-22. That aid supports those countries to be better prepared for an increase in population movement from Afghanistan and to deliver services to refugees and asylum seekers.

Important points were made about what we can do to help encourage girls to study at home. We support access to education for girls at primary level through community-based education, which reaches adolescent girls close to their homes. Some of the partners that provide community-based education are testing innovative approaches to reach girls through technology, as mentioned by several hon. Members today. However, we have some concerns around access to electricity and the internet, which make it difficult to scale technology-based solutions.

There was a call to impose sanctions on members of the Taliban who send their daughters to schools overseas. I understand those concerns. We believe it is important to continue to engage with the more moderate members of the Taliban to persuade them to call on the Emir to reverse the edict banning girls’ education. That is the primary focus in that work.

Points have been made on how we can support particular cases. I am with the FCDO, not the Home Office, and it would not be appropriate for us to comment on individual cases. However, we are working hard to encourage and support people to come into the United Kingdom. To date, 24,500 people have been brought to safety, and since April 2021 more than 9,000 people have been granted settled status under pathway 1 of ACRS. Since 2022, the first people have arrived in the UK through pathway 2 of ACRS, and, in the first stage of pathway 3, the Government are considering eligible or at-risk British Council contractors, GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni for resettlement.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am very grateful to the Minister, who is a very decent man and I am sure very sympathetic to the plight of the Afghan women. Will he please take the message back to the Home Office that if it wants to claim credit, rightfully, for those schemes, it needs to create the machinery to enable right hon. and hon. Members to engage with its officials in the way that we did when we successfully engaged over Ukraine? We need that hub back. Please will he raise that point with his Home Office counterparts?

[David Rutley]

I noted the point that my right hon. Friend made in his short but important contribution, which he has just reiterated. I will take that away and follow it up with the Home Office.

I want to highlight the important work that we should carry on doing to get the Taliban to change course.

Sudan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, particularly his comments about the work of the armed forces, which, as he said, was absolutely outstanding. He asked about how we elevate our humanitarian response to this crisis. I have to tell him that more than 10 humanitarian workers have been murdered during the course of this conflict. I said in my statement that it was five humanitarian workers, but if we include the wider definition of humanitarian workers, the number is more than 10. For the humanitarian work to take place and for the corridors that Prime Minister Hamdok has called for to operate, there must be a ceasefire and therefore all our efforts are addressed to that. We are working closely with all the humanitarian agencies, through the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union, to secure that.

The hon. Gentleman asked me for an estimate of those who are left, but it is not possible to be precise about that. He will have seen the figures of those who have been evacuated by the Royal Air Force and those who have gone from Port Sudan by sea. However, there is no question that those in Khartoum, which is where the predominant number of people were, will have known about the evacuation and will have been able to go to the airport. We believe that it is inconceivable that people did not know about it, and we think most of them are out.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked me about safe and legal routes. When the Prime Minister made his comprehensive statement to the House about how we would stop the boats and the poor people coming across the busiest sea lane in the world, putting themselves into the hands of the modern-day equivalent of the slave trader, he set out a whole range of measures, including that in due course he would introduce safe and legal routes. That is the answer to that question.

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

Is there any evidence that the Wagner Group’s links with the Rapid Support Forces had anything to do with the uprising, bearing in mind that the attention of our Government and no doubt others has been taken away from Ukraine by this crisis? Does the Minister agree that, if we do not wish to see a flood of refugees coming into western Europe, such humanitarian aid as we give must be focused on the surrounding countries, nearer to where this crisis is playing out?

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend is entirely right on his final point. I have nothing that I can say about the work of Russia and Wagner in Sudan, but I can assure him that our attention has not been taken off the Wagner Group at any point.

Sudan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 24th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments about the armed forces. As I mentioned in the statement, we do not think that our diplomatic reach is diminished in these circumstances by diplomats being withdrawn. That is because, when they were holed up in great jeopardy in Khartoum, they were not able to operate, and most of the work was being done from the crisis centre in London, and that is the position today. I can tell him that our teams in surrounding states are moving to the point where they can help anyone who comes in across the border, and the diplomatic mission that was resident in Khartoum will be relocating shortly to a neighbouring country.

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

According to the Ministry of Defence, the Sudanese armed forces have been reasonably helpful on evacuation issues, but surely the best possible protection for any future evacuation would be under the auspices of the United Nations where blue berets still count for a lot. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that the Government are in the closest contact with the UN to see whether that extra degree of protection can be obtained for any future extraction operation?

[Mr Mitchell]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that not only is the role of the UN under constant examination, to be progressed in any way we possibly can, but that, as Britain holds the pen—in the jargon of these things—at the UN on Sudan, we are leading the efforts to ensure that all possible opportunities through the United Nations are pursued.

Sudan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

Britain has a close and enormously supportive relationship with the International Red Cross, and the hon. Gentleman may rest assured that we will use that relationship to help the people who are in such jeopardy. Some 100 people are already dead as a result of the conflict and, as of tonight, there is no sign of the conflict stopping. We are doing everything we possibly can, pursuing all diplomatic avenues, to resolve the conflict and return to a civilian-led transitional government.

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

Is there any ideological basis for the rift between the two warring military leaders? What attitude do we believe that Egypt is taking to the conflict? What assessment have the Government made of the risk of Islamist extremism re-emerging in Sudan as a result of the conflict?

[Mr Mitchell]

There is every danger of that happening as a result of the disorder and chaos that we are witnessing. My right hon. Friend asks if there is any ideological rift between the two generals who are perpetrating this warfare. As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) pointed out, the conflict is characterised by two powerful men fighting it out for power.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

In respect of the points he raised early in his contribution, we will look at everything. Of course, the Magnitsky legislation, which many of us were heavily involved in getting through the House, is a very significant piece on the board, which we should always use whenever we can.

In respect of removing Russia from the credible international architecture, which the hon. Gentleman suggested, we led the move to remove Russia from the United Nations Human Rights Council, so he may rest assured that we are alert to such opportunities.

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

A few years ago, people saw no continuity between the cold war Soviet Union and present-day Russia, but what would one expect from a state run by a KGB gangster like Putin? I remind the House of the memoirs of a man called Anatoly Marchenko—“My Testimony”, published in 1969—who died in a Soviet jail in 1986. He, like Navalny and Kara-Murza, exposed himself to indefinite imprisonment to show up the nature of the then Soviet state. Can we, at least, stop downplaying Russia as an “authoritarian” regime, and instead speak the truth and say that it remains a totalitarian state, run by a KGB gangster?

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend brings to bear considerable experience of these matters. He speaks with great wisdom. What he says about Anatoly Marchenko, who died in 1986, is absolutely right. We should all pay tribute to the extraordinarily brave people in repressive regimes who stand up for human rights and justice, on behalf of themselves and their fellow citizens.

Raid of BBC Offices in India

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and I noted a bit of coughing going on, which will give him a clue to a few things.

The hon. Gentleman raised important points. The UK’s support for media freedom is well known. Media freedom and freedom of speech are essential elements of robust democracies. As I said in my opening remarks, I cannot comment on the specifics of the allegations, because the BBC is co-operating with the Indian authorities on the matter, and as the BBC has said, this is an ongoing investigation and it would be inappropriate for it to comment further.

The hon. Gentleman made important points about the implications for NGOs and faith-based organisations. He knows that we continue to work with them on the ground. That is an important issue for him, and certainly for me.

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

I have often drawn the attention of the House to the very important work done by the BBC Monitoring service. Does not this extremely worrying raid on the BBC, in a country as advanced and potentially well disposed towards this country as India, once again illustrate the importance of not placing too much reliance on sources in countries on which we are reporting, because there is always the potential for action to be taken against local sources? Services such as Monitoring should have strong representation in this country, to guard against disturbing events of the sort that we have seen.

[David Rutley]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his thoughts on these matters. He has been consistent on these issues. I highlight that we believe that the BBC plays an important role. The FCDO funds services in 12 languages, including four Indian languages: Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu. It will continue to do so, because it is important to ensure that our voice—and an independent voice, through the BBC—is heard throughout the world.

Ukraine

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is right: in sometimes fractious times in our country, the spirit of the British people and their generosity has known no bounds. Their compassion is humbling and their desire to continue to stand steadfast alongside the Ukrainian people is a tribute to our nation. We can also all be proud of the role our armed forces are playing in training Ukrainian forces. We can be proud of the contribution of our diplomats and our brilliant ambassador, Melinda Simmons, on the ground in Kyiv. As has been said, we can be proud of the way British families have opened their homes to Ukrainians fleeing war and supported their cause from home.

Putin’s war in Ukraine marks the end of the post-cold war era and we need a new mindset for these challenging times. The past year has illustrated some hard lessons. First, it has laid bare how naive and complacent we have been about Russian malign intent in this country and others. The invasion exposed a decade of chronic inaction against dirty money from Russia and other authoritarian states, which saw Kremlin-linked oligarchs and kleptocrats use London as both the hiding place and service industry for their ill-gotten gains. It should never have taken the invasion of Ukraine for us to act and although some progress has been made, the job is far from done. Labour will continue to hold the Government to account until Britain is no longer a soft touch for illicit finance.

Secondly, as the Defence Secretary himself conceded, for a decade we have hollowed out and underfunded our armed forces. Many in Europe believed that the era of wars between states was over. We reshaped our security, defence, intelligence and diplomacy to tackle different threats, allowing core capabilities to dwindle. Even when Putin broke international law and invaded his neighbours, our responses were weak. That must change, beginning with the immediate need for a stockpiles strategy to sustain support for Ukraine and rearm Britain.

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

As someone, not alone, who has called on both Front Benches for a very long time to commit to spend 3% of GDP on defence—a figure that we were still spending in the mid-1990s after the end of the cold war—I am used to hearing people say that we need to spend more when they are not in a position to do so. Could the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that if he were in a position of power, we would reach 3% of GDP as a minimum on defence?

[Mr Lammy]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee for all that he has said on this issue over many years. We in my party have committed to a defence review on day one if we were to come to office. I gently remind him that throughout our previous period in office, spending on defence per capita was higher than today, standing at 2.5% when we left office. We are seeing what is happening across the European continent—so many European countries are committed to spending more, including the 3% that he indicates. We must play our part alongside France, as 50% of Europe’s defence capability.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a matter of great satisfaction that we have American visitors present today to witness the absolute unity of outlook on both sides of this Chamber. It can never be stressed too often that three concepts lie at the heart of defence and security: deterrence, containment and the unpredictability of future conflicts. To give an example of the last, one has only to look at the exchange between the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and myself on the day of the invasion. I asked him:

“If, as appears likely, Ukraine gets overwhelmed, will we offer to give sanctuary to a Government in exile, pending Ukraine’s future freedom?”

The then Prime Minister replied, quite sensibly:

“One of the points I made to President Zelensky this morning was that it might be necessary for him to find a safe place for him and his Cabinet to go.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 570.]

I was quite sensible in asking that question, and my right hon. Friend was quite sensible in giving that answer because, let us be frank, not many people—at least, not many outside the Cabinet and Government of Ukraine—thought that Ukraine had much chance of resisting what appeared to be, and indeed was, a massive, albeit ill-conceived, onslaught against numerically far smaller forces. I said there are three concepts, and that is an example of the unpredictability of future warfare.

I remind amateur strategists, such as myself, in all parties, that just as we were not prepared for the successful resistance of Ukraine, we should not now become too complacent that Ukraine cannot possibly be defeated. We could wake up tomorrow to find that there has been some terrific, unexpected Russian breakthrough and the whole strategic situation has changed completely. That is why the appeals being made so strongly from both sides of the House are that we must, to coin someone coining someone else coining a phrase, “give them the tools to finish the job”.

It can be argued that deterrence failed, but why did deterrence fail in terms of Russia invading Ukraine? I am sorry to share this with friends from across the Atlantic, but one reason deterrence failed in this context was that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia came almost six months to the day from the catastrophic and bungled exit from Afghanistan by NATO. I am not saying that that planted the seed in Putin’s mind to do what he did, but it certainly may have affected the timing of him doing something that he had almost certainly wanted to do for a long time. We have to bear in mind what sort of signals we were sending. The answer is that we were sending signals of weakness, and when signals of weakness are sent to an authoritarian—that is the rather mild term used these days for what most of us from another era would call the totalitarian—type of government, we ought to know what to expect their behaviour to be.

I have talked about unpredictability and the limitations of deterrence. There is one element of deterrence—nuclear deterrence—where the results are more certain, should one dare put it to the test; but it nevertheless has to be considered in every scenario, no matter what sort of terrible fighting and atrocious behaviour may go on below the level of the nuclear threshold.

Let us talk a little bit about containment. Containment is what one has to do when faced with a deeply hostile opponent. It is no good talking about battling for “mutual understanding”. The trouble is, we can have mutual understanding where one person understands that the other person is a democrat and the democrat understands that the other person is a totalitarian dictator. That is not a recipe for peace; it is actually a sound portrayal of a situation where, unless the democrat shows the dictator that he cannot get his own way by force of arms, the dictator will try to get his own way by force of arms.

I have two other topics I shall touch on briefly in this contribution. One is to draw attention to an important analysis that appeared on the website “Desk Russie” on 30 December 2021, just two months before the invasion. It was by an old friend of mine whom I have known for the best part of 40 years. She is a brilliant French historian and former Sovietologist called Dr Françoise Thom. She drew attention to the texts of two draft treaties that were unveiled by the Russian Foreign Ministry on 17 December 2021. One was a draft treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation on security guarantees, and the other was a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It was made absolutely clear that these were take it or leave it offers. They were encapsulated by the deputy Foreign Minister Grushko, who said:

“The Europeans must also think about whether they want to avoid making their continent the scene of a military confrontation. They have a choice. Either they take seriously what is put on the table, or they face a military-technical alternative”—

that is war to the rest of us. This is a deputy Foreign Minister stating in terms that unless European states do what Russia wants, they can expect to be embroiled in armed conflict.

A former deputy Minister of Defence, Andrey Kartapolov, of the Duma Defence Committee, said as follows: “Our partners”—meaning our partners in the west—

“must understand that the longer they drag out the examination of our proposals and the adoption of real measures to create these guarantees, the greater the likelihood that they will suffer a pre-emptive strike.”

What was in those draft treaties? I will give the Chamber one example. Article 4 states, in part, that

“the Russian Federation and all participants which were, as of 27 May 1997, member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, shall not deploy their armed forces and armaments on the territory of any other European state in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997.”

What is the significance of 1997? Well it is this, Madam Deputy Speaker: it was only after 1997 that 14 of the present 30 members of NATO joined the alliance. Starting in 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined, and then almost a dozen more followed.

What the Russians were basically saying was that, unless America agrees to withdraw its support from all those newly freed democracies, and unless all NATO countries agree to withdraw their armed forces from all those NATO member countries, they can expect to find themselves in an armed conflict with Russia. The trouble is, statements of that sort do not get reported in the west as clearly as they should be—if they do at all. They are generally kept in, as it were, the specialised centres and the highly learned brains of people like Dr Françoise Thom.

I am basically saying that there are three outcomes when we get into a situation such as this. The first is that we can capitulate. The second is open warfare. The third is containment, otherwise known in the old days as cold war. I really resent it when people say, “Oh, you don’t want to go back to the cold war.” If the alternatives are capitulation or open warfare, then cold war is the very best we can do in staring down an aggressor.

I end where I began when intervening earlier to draw attention to the state of the UK’s defence budget, notwithstanding the considerable injection of cash that was made under the previous Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Even that only brought our percentage of defence expenditure up from about 2.1% of GDP to 2.3%.

A few years earlier, in 2015-16, there was a change in the accounting methods for calculating what our expenditure on defence was as a proportion of GDP. That was not an illegitimate change; it just led to us including certain items which NATO counts towards defence expenditure that we had not previously counted. If it had not been for that change in accounting, our expenditure on defence would not have been at 2.1%, which was what it was before the cash injection given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip; it would have been at 1.8%. My right hon. Friend’s cash injection would have taken it up to 2.1%.

Under the old system of accounting, in the mid-1990s, we were still spending 3% of GDP on defence. At the height of the cold war, in the mid-1980s, as I have said time and again to this House, we regularly and consistently spent—under the old system of accounting—between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. We hear talk of arguments between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury on whether some extra billions will be made available. We all recognise that if Ukraine succeeds in defeating this aggression, while they will be doing it for their own benefit, they will benefit the whole of the western world. It will mean that the odds of us ever having to engage in that sort of fighting ourselves, against a regime of the sort there is in Russia, will be massively reduced.

Ask yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, what we would do if we found ourselves against our will forced into a conflict of that sort. Immediately, the amount we had to spend on defence would shoot up, not to 3% but probably to something like 10% or 15%. It would take every single scrap of effort, financially, economically and industrially, that this country could possibly generate. That is what always happens if we find ourselves in a war—not to mention all the costs in human life, treasure and misery. Therefore, this should be seen as an investment. If we increase our defence budget, we are investing in the freedom of Ukraine, and we are investing in the freedom and peace of the whole of the western world.

Turkey and Syria Earthquake

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady makes a sad but important point. This situation will evolve, and sadly, it is highly likely to get much worse before it gets better. I will make sure that my office liaises with Mr Speaker about the most effective way to provide timely updates to the House, whether it be via the Dispatch Box or in some other format. I recognise that over the next few days and next week, when the House is not sitting, the Dispatch Box might not be the most effective way of doing so. I also recognise that this situation will be coming to its peak over the next couple of days, and Members, rightly, will expect to have updates, so I will try to find a way of most effectively facilitating that.

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

A situation of this sort in a fellow NATO member would seem to be tailor-made for military assistance from us to their civil powers. Do we not have any Royal Navy ships in the area, and are there not Royal Marine contingents that could be put quickly to work, with the agreement of the Turkish authorities?

[James Cleverly]

I will take the ideas that my right hon. Friend put forward very seriously. The initial assessment of need is very much in urban search and rescue, and the UK, along with a number of NATO and non-NATO partners, is putting forward that capability. I suspect medical assistance will be next, but we will continue liaising very closely with the Turkish Government and the United Nations about what is needed on each side of the border.

British Council Contractors in Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Baron]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We asked these people to step up to the plate and are looking away when it is our turn to do so. That cannot be right and does not create a good impression of our country’s approach to such matters on the international stage.

Last summer, after activity from the British Council all-party group in particular—I thank the APPG and its members for being so hardy in this cause—the Government opened an application window for the contractors to apply for a place on the ACRS. The British Council worked at pace with the FCDO, as the Minister will know, to winnow out genuine applicants. By September, around half had heard that they had a place on the scheme, pending security checks, but they have heard nothing since. Certainly, that was the case up to Christmas. The other half of applicants—around 100—had simply heard nothing at all. Their papers were stuck in a bureaucratic mishmash in Whitehall. Following pressure from the British Council all-party group in particular and from others, I understand that over the Christmas recess around half of the contractors had their ACRS applications acknowledged and granted, and I look forward to hearing whether the Minister can confirm that.

Barriers remain. People will apparently require the necessary ID and travel documents to leave Afghanistan. They left their homes at short notice and are in fear of their lives, moving from one safehouse to another, and I am sure the Minister will be sympathetic to the case that they might not have all their paperwork. The idea of applying to the Taliban for passports is, as I am sure the Minister will realise, just not feasible. Meanwhile, new-born children may have arrived, bringing further complication for paperwork.

In the interest of brevity, knowing that others might want to contribute to this very brief debate and wanting to allow the Minister plenty of time to respond and take interventions if necessary, I have four questions for the Minister. I hope he will take note of them and answer them in turn. First, am I right to understand that around half the contractors have been given the go-ahead? It is a simple yes or no.

Secondly, have they been told they can make for the border? If so, I ask the Minister what he and the wider ministerial team at the FCDO are doing to encourage Governments in third countries to offer a greater degree of flexibility on paperwork for those seeking to cross the border out of Afghanistan. Such arrangements were previously agreed with the Government of Pakistan, which allowed individuals under the predecessor Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme to cross the border without ID if their names were on a list approved by the British Government. Is it going to be as simple as that?

Thirdly, I understand that around half of contractors are yet to hear anything. By when can they expect to be contacted? It is totally unacceptable, as Members have already heard and will continue to hear. It is totally unacceptable—a view widely held in the House—that those people have had to hold on and wait for so long. It is just inhumane.

Finally, may I make a plea to the Minister? In my various deliberations, I have heard some unedifying, if not distasteful, talk of quotas. Will he ensure that quotas do not prevent those who worked for Britain and their families seeking safety in the UK? After all, there was no talk of quotas when we asked for volunteers. There is no talk of quotas when it comes to the extent of these people’s bravery in stepping up to the plate when we needed them. We should therefore not be talking about quotas when it is our turn to stand by them.

In conclusion, although I do not doubt Government or the Minister’s good intentions—it is often an issue of cock-up rather than conspiracy—the sad fact is that after the scheme was introduced, for the whole year of 2022, not one person was relocated. I will not accept any of the talk I have heard previously of many hundreds or thousands being helped. That is disinformation. People who got out under Operation Pitting have been retrospectively shoehorned into various schemes. I hope the Minister will not recite those figures to me. The sad fact is that during 2022 nobody has been relocated under the scheme.

As we reach the first anniversary of the ACRS, I urge the Government finally to get all those contractors and their families to safety. Recent talk in certain circles of the number of Taliban being killed has not helped them at all. After all, the ACRS was a flagship scheme announced with great fanfare, but nobody has yet been relocated. The litmus test of the success of the scheme is how many people have been relocated over the course of the past year, and that figure is a big fat zero. Now is the time to put that right.

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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way so near to the end of his speech. I just wanted to remind Members that this is very similar to what happened with Afghan interpreters, where there was a redundancy scheme—this was before the fall of Kabul—and an intimidation scheme. While considerable numbers were brought out under the redundancy scheme, none was brought out under the intimidation scheme, at least until the fifth report of the Defence Committee of 2017 to 2019, which was published in May 2018 and recommended a more generous approach. As the Minister was a member of the Defence Committee that drew up that report, I am sure he will be sympathetic to a request for a meeting to discuss all these matters—as has already been offered by his ministerial colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell).

[Mr Baron]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. I completely agree: there are many similarities, and one would have thought that we would have learned the lessons by now.

Having finished my address, I look forward to the Minister answering those four specific questions.

British Council Contractors: Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, and he is quite right to express deep concern about those who are caught in this way. He asks me whether he may raise cases privately with me, and of course the answer is yes. I will make arrangements for those meetings to take place straight after this urgent question is over. He asks a number of questions, and if I do not answer them fully, I will ensure that we write to him. He is right to say that we keep in very good contact with regional partners in countries to try to advance this issue. This particular stream only opened in June this year. The Foreign Office has processed and is informing something in the region of 200 of those who are eligible in principle, and if the dependants are added to that, it is something like 750. So those are proceeding, and it is of course up to the Home Office to procure the necessary security clearance prior to them securing entry clearance. So, the process is going on, but I fully accept his frustration—it is a frustration we all share in this matter—and as I say, perhaps we can proceed with a private meeting, as he has requested.

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

Is there not a fundamental problem with talking about safe and legal routes for people who, if they expose themselves to the Taliban, are at risk because of that very fact? Last Thursday evening, I was at the Last Supper gallery to attend a photographic exhibition organised by the Sulha Alliance on behalf of Afghan interpreters, several of whom were there, including one who had been shot and another whose brother had not got out and had been murdered. The photographer, Andy Barnham, felt it necessary to anonymise the photographs because of the risks of identification. Do the Government not have to come up with a better idea for how to extract people who are at risk as a result of helping us, without them having to declare themselves openly and thus put themselves in more peril?

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend, with great eloquence, makes a most important point. There are various ways in which we can deal with this, and which it would not be sensible to talk about on the Floor of the House. He makes one of the big difficulties very clear. If it would be helpful, I am happy to discuss this with him.