Afghan Relocations: Special Forces

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on Afghan relocation and assistance policy eligibility for Afghan special forces.

[The Minister for Armed Forces (James Heappey)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to update the House on developments relating to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme, and to answer the specific question raised by the hon. Gentleman in relation to former members of commando force 333 and Afghan territorial force 444.

Many colleagues across the House are passionate advocates for applicants to the ARAP scheme—whether they served shoulder to shoulder with them in Afghanistan, or represent applicants and their family members who are residents in their constituencies. We owe a debt of gratitude to those brave individuals who served for, with, or alongside our armed forces in support of the UK mission in Afghanistan. Defence is determined to honour the commitments we made under the ARAP scheme, which is why we have robust checks in place and regularly review processes and procedures.

Although many former members of the Afghan specialist units have been found eligible under ARAP and safely relocated to the UK with their families, a recent review of processes around eligibility decisions demonstrated instances of inconsistent application of the ARAP criteria in certain cases. The issue relates to a tranche of applications from former members of Afghan specialist units, including members of CF 333 and ATF 444—known as the Triples. Having identified this issue through internal processes, we must now take necessary steps to ensure that the criteria are applied appropriately to all those individuals.

As such, I can confirm that the Ministry of Defence will undertake a reassessment of all eligibility decisions made for applications with credible claims of links to the Afghan specialist units. The reassessment will be done by a team independent of the one that made the initial eligibility decisions on the applications. The team will review each case thoroughly and individually. A written ministerial statement to that effect was tabled this morning, and I commend it to colleagues. A further “Dear colleague” letter will follow by close of business tomorrow.

It is the case, however, that ARAP applications from this cohort present a unique set of challenges for eligibility decision making. Some served in their units more than two decades ago, and some while the Afghan state apparatus was still in its infancy or yet to come into existence all together. It is also the case that they reported directly into the Government of Afghanistan, meaning that we do not hold comprehensive employment or payment records in the same way as we do for other applicants.

I fully understand the depth of feeling that ARAP evokes across this place and beyond. I thank Members from across the House for their ongoing advocacy and support for ARAP. We have that same depth of feeling in the MOD and in Government, and we will now work quickly to make sure that the decisions are reviewed, and changed if that is necessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question.

The Triples Afghan special forces, trained and funded by the UK, are some of the top targets for Taliban reprisals. Around 200 Triples face imminent deportation from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and at least six members of the Triples are reported to have been murdered by the Taliban since the withdrawal from Kabul. Ministers have allowed media speculation to build for almost a week before setting out to Parliament today the Government’s plan to U-turn and look again at the applications.

The Minister highlighted inconsistencies in processing the applications—failures, flaws. How was that allowed to happen on his watch? How long will the reviews take, and what new information will be factored in? Tragically, today’s decision could be too late for many. Does the Minister know how many of the Triples who were wrongly denied support have already been deported to Afghanistan, tortured or killed? What conversations has he had with Pakistan to halt deportations of those who could now be granted sanctuary? There is no time to waste.

The least the Triples deserve is clarity over ARAP policy, but for months a public spat has played out between the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and the Minister for Armed Forces. We should all remember that the people who matter here are those Afghans who have been left in limbo, fearing for their lives and their futures. That is why clarity matters. Britain’s moral duty to assist Afghans is felt most fiercely by those in the UK forces who served alongside them, many of whom sit on both sides of the House. British personnel who have offered references to former Triples say that they were never even contacted by the Ministry of Defence. Many of their ARAP applications were denied. Will such basic errors happen again, or will that be reviewed properly?

The British public do not understand why Afghan special forces personnel who served and fought alongside our troops and who are eligible for safety have not yet received sanctuary here. Will the Minister now sort this out?

[James Heappey]

I know that the hon. Gentleman, who has been advocating for some cases and is as passionate about the matter as anybody, will feel aggrieved, as will many colleagues around the House. The responsibility of any Minister is to own any failure of process that happens in their Department, and I accept that responsibility.

The reality is that these are very difficult decisions to make. The hon. Gentleman said that the Triples were funded by the UK Government. That is not entirely accurate; they were funded as a donor alongside many other donors, into the Government of Afghanistan, who funded the units. As he will well know from colleagues on his own Benches who commanded units that worked closely with the Triples, top-up payments were made in order to generate loyalty and, frankly, to avoid the Triples being poached by other coalition partners, which had similar forces of their own.

The records of those top-up payments were very ad hoc. I take my responsibilities for accuracy to the House seriously, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman in all seriousness that we have looked for employment records and none of those ad hoc records of additional payments is available to us. We have spoken to colleagues who have experience of these matters in the House and beyond, to ask for any records that they have, but even then a lot of the records produced are those that are put together by charities advocating for the Triples, rather than contemporary records of those top-up payments.

The reality is that whatever the challenges have been, some decisions were made in an inconsistent way. That is why they must be reviewed. We will aim to get the review done as quickly as possible—we anticipate that it will take around 12 weeks. Before that, we need to put in place the people who will do the review, who will be independent of everything that has gone before. In the first instance, it will be a review of the robustness of the decisions themselves, and where it finds that decisions were not robust, we will, of course, seek new information both from the applicant and from colleagues in the House who have advocated for them.

The shadow Minister makes some good points about what this means for people who are in Pakistan. It is impossible to say who, of those who were not already in the pipeline as approved applicants, has been deported. We do not track that, so I cannot answer his specific question but, of course, we will alert the Government of Pakistan to those who are included within the review, so that they can enjoy the same protection from deportation as those who have already been approved and are awaiting their onward move to the UK.

The shadow Minister necessarily points to the politics and the alleged disagreement among Conservative Members —that is the nature of his role—but I am simply not motivated by such things. The reality is that we are trying our best to bring as many people to the UK from Afghanistan as possible. Some decisions are relatively straightforward, because we hold the employment records, but others are far more complicated. Although there have undoubtedly been some decisions that are not robust and need to be reviewed, I put on record that the people involved in making those decisions, across the MOD, have been working their hardest and doing their best. I stand up for their service and for what they have done, and I take responsibility for their shortcomings.

Former Afghan Special Forces: Deportation

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on former Afghan special forces facing deportation from Pakistan to Afghanistan.

[The Minister for Armed Forces (James Heappey)]

I thank the shadow Minister for asking this urgent question.

The Afghan relocations and assistance policy is far more generous in design than predecessor schemes such as the ex-gratia scheme. None the less, ARAP is a specific scheme intended to support those who worked for, with or alongside the UK armed forces in support of the UK mission or national security objectives in Afghanistan. While we are acutely aware of the difficult circumstances in which many Afghans find themselves, not everyone will be eligible even if they worked for the Afghanistan security forces. Many Afghans have worked in proximity to UK armed forces but this may have been in service of the Afghan Government, in a nation-building capacity, or though working directly with other nations.

CF333 and ATF444, known as the Triples, were Afghan-led taskforces set up to counter drug trafficking and organised crime and they reported into the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs. They are therefore a component of the Afghan national security forces and are not automatically in scope for relocation under ARAP. Regrettably, we cannot relocate all former members of the Afghan national security forces under the ARAP scheme. That means that some Afghans, whose bravery and heroism are in no doubt whatever—indeed, I served alongside many of them myself—such as certain members of the CF333 and ATF444 taskforces, will not be eligible for relocation under ARAP. Each ARAP application is assessed on a case-by-case basis. All applications, including those from former members of the Triples, are scrutinised on their own merits and in line with our published policy and eligibility criteria, available on the Government website, and in line with the immigration rules. All applicants, irrespective of job role, will be eligible only if they individually meet these criteria outlined in the published policy.

I must emphasise this point for the record: any suggestion that we are making blanket decisions—eligible or ineligible —for any cohort of applicant, or that we have any preconceived position on any application to the scheme, is simply untrue. That is not the approach that Defence takes on processing applications as a matter of policy. The MOD consults the evidence provided from each applicant and our own internal records and engages with internal stakeholders and other Departments when determining eligibility in line with the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the immigration rules.

[Luke Pollard]

Since before the fall of Kabul, the Government’s treatment of Afghans who worked alongside British troops has been a shameful saga of failure. Ministers have failed to deal with the ballooning backlog of ARAP applications, broken housing promises, data breaches and Afghans stuck abroad in limbo fearing for their lives. Today, we have learned from reports that former Afghan special forces who served alongside British troops are possibly facing deportation back to Afghanistan. Let us be clear: that means that lives could be put at serious harm from the Taliban.

All of us in this House want to see the Government finally and fully honour the commitments given by Britain as a nation to these Afghans. That is why we are all here today. Urgent detail is now needed from the Minister about this escalating situation. First, how many former Afghan special forces who served alongside our forces are at risk of imminent deportation from Afghanistan to Pakistan? What assessment has been made by the Ministry of Defence of the threat to these Afghan elite forces if they are deported back to Afghanistan? What assessment has been made of the threat to their families, and is it as grim as we all fear?

What is the current backlog in ARAP cases? In a parliamentary question answered last week about the safety of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, the Government said that they had

“received assurances from the Government of Pakistan that Afghans being supported…under the Afghans Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) and Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) will remain safe in Pakistan while they await relocation to the UK.”

In light of today’s news, what were the original assurances given to the UK by the Pakistani Government? Can the Minister confirm that zero Afghans pending ARAP or ACRS application decisions or relocations will be sent back to Afghanistan?

General Sir Richard Barrons, who served with the British Army for 12 years in Afghanistan, described the failure to relocate these former Afghan special forces to the UK as a “disgrace” and a “betrayal”. He is right, is he not? There can be no more excuses. Ministers must fix their ailing Afghan schemes and honour the commitment given to our Afghan friends before they are deported back to Afghanistan and potentially killed by the Taliban.

[James Heappey]

I am not sure where to start on that. What the hon. Gentleman I think is knowingly doing is conflating a number of separate issues. There is the issue over the processing of those who can legitimately come to the UK under the ARAP scheme. Finding those applicants in among tens of thousands of applications —many of which are duplicates and many of which are bogus, though plenty are not—has been a heck of a task for the team within the MOD that have been tasked with that over the past two years. However, we are getting to the bottom of the pile.

Crucially, those who are eligible under category 2, which is those who worked directly for the British armed forces, whether as patrol interpreters or cultural advisers and so on, are known to us. We have the employment records, so, as I have said to the House many times, we have been able to go into the list of applications, find those whom we are looking for and whom we know to have worked for us and accelerate their approval. As we get through the tail end of the applications, we are seeing lots of rejections, because frankly we have already gone ahead and found those who matched the employment records that we had from our time in Afghanistan. On those who are eligible for the core of the scheme, I have a great deal of confidence that we really are reaching the bottom of the list, and we are moving at pace to bring them out. I will first answer the hon. Gentleman’s question about the deportation of those who are eligible.

I spoke to both the UK high commissioner to Islamabad and the Pakistan high commissioner to London this afternoon before coming to the House. Both are entirely comfortable with the assurances we have received from the Pakistan Government that those for whom we have made an eligibility decision will not be deported. I know of one case where somebody who had received a rejection was deported before their appeal was heard. I am not sure that there is necessarily anything we can do to mitigate that—Pakistan is, after all, a sovereign country and has every right to say who can and cannot be in the country—but that person, whose review was successful, was successfully brought back into Pakistan and is now waiting to come to the UK.

As for those in Islamabad, wider Pakistan or any other third country and who may have worked for the Afghan special forces, the answer is that we cannot possibly know that, because we do not have the employment records of the Afghan special forces. Therefore, we cannot say who did and did not work with them. We know who has applied to ARAP, and every time someone does, we make an individual judgment about what that person did. Were they just a member of the Triples—heroic and important, but not necessarily working directly for and with us—or were they a member of the Triples who routinely worked with UK special forces or the intelligence community, who would thus be eligible under ARAP category 4? I appreciate that that is a suboptimal answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, but if we do not know who worked for the Afghan special forces because they work for the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs or the Afghan Ministry of Defence, it is impossible to say how many of those people may or may not now be in Pakistan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

After 13 years of Tory Army cuts, serious and senior military figures are now questioning the UK’s ability to deliver our NATO obligations. While NATO is boosting the size of its high-readiness forces from 40,000 to 300,000 following Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, UK Ministers plan to cut the Army further to the smallest since the Napoleonic era. The last Conservative Defence Secretary told this House that the Government had “hollowed out and underfunded” our armed forces. Is that still the position of the Ministry of Defence, and will the Tory Army cuts still be forced through by this latest set of Ministers?

[James Heappey]

The former Secretary of State’s comment, which the shadow Minister conveniently quotes in a limited way, was that successive Governments had failed to invest in the enablers that underpinned our war-fighting capability. It is to the credit of this Prime Minister and the two Conservative Prime Ministers who went before him that commitments have been made to grow our defence budgets, including under Prime Minister Johnson a £19 billion increase to the defence budget and under this Prime Minister another £5 billion in the last year or so. The shadow Minister also ignores this: when he says that NATO is increasing its rapid reaction force, that does not mean that in NATO armies are growing; it just means that the armies in NATO are committing ever more of the forces they have to NATO’s high-readiness formations. The British Army is to the fore in that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has led many NATO members to reboot their defence plans. The Defence Secretary now agrees with Labour that the integrated review needs updating. Would it not be absurd to cut the Army any further when Ukraine and our NATO allies are facing such clear and rising hostility? Can the Minister tell us which cuts he wants to reverse? Can he tell us whether further Army cuts will finally be halted, as Labour has consistently argued for?

[James Heappey]

The integrated review is indeed being refreshed—quite rightly, because in the past nine months we have seen war in Europe and growing belligerence by China in the far east. Exactly what the shape of our nation’s armed forces must look like must be a consequence of those new threats. I am not going to rule anything in or out at the Dispatch Box today, because we need to look at what those competitions with Russia in the immediate term and China in the longer term look like, and what our armed forces therefore need to look like.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

We are now only a few weeks away from the one-year anniversary of the start of Operation Pitting, the evacuation from Kabul. A year on, thousands of Afghan citizens are still waiting for their applications to be properly processed, too many are still in temporary accommodation, and the promises made to many of them about relocation and family reunions have been left unhonoured. With the one-year anniversary a few weeks away, what will the Minister be doing to speed up this incredibly slow process, so the promises that this country made to those Afghans who worked with our armed forces can truly be honoured?

[James Heappey]

The hon. Gentleman probably just heard me answer the previous two questions. There are hundreds of thousands of applications, many of which are duplicates, and many of which are from people who have no eligibility under ARAP whatsoever. ARAP is a very tightly bound scheme. It is not the same as the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme or other mechanisms where each case might be judged on its merits. There is a list of people who worked with the British armed forces in Afghanistan, so our focus must be on finding the people on that list and bringing them out. We are doing so quickly.

The hon. Gentleman says that it has been nearly a year. That is correct, Mr Speaker, but it is not as if we can just wander around in Afghanistan and find these people. It is not straightforward. A lot of them are undocumented. He may want to speak to some of the charities that are working on this, as I know that some of his colleagues on the Back Benches do. When I spoke to them last week, they realised that the situation was exactly as I have said: it is not easy; people do not have documents; and we are working fast to get people out. We think we have found of way of doing so quicker, and we will be getting on with it now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Labour’s commitment to NATO is unshakeable. We support the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine and we back the bolstering of defences for our allies on NATO’s eastern front. The Government have already deployed various assets, including Royal Navy ships from Devonport, which I am proud to represent, but will the Minister set out what further forces are being prepared for deployment to our NATO allies? Can he say whether the cost of that deployment is coming from already strained Ministry of Defence budgets, or whether it will be met from the Treasury reserve, as was the case during the last Labour Government?

[James Heappey]

There is a constant regeneration of forces. As two battle groups are committed to Estonia, more battle groups need to embark on the training pipeline to make sure that we have contingent land forces at readiness. Similarly, ships have been deployed to the two NATO standing maritime groups and to Exercise Cold Response. We continue to generate further ships to give more choice and options thereafter, if requested by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Similarly, with the Typhoons and F-35s, a large amount has been committed as part of the initial response force, but we are generating more to have them at our disposal, if SACEUR asks for more.

The hon. Gentleman asks about the money right now. All of it seems to be being met by the Treasury; long may that continue.

Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military

Debate between Luke Pollard and James Heappey

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

My former boss on the Energy and Climate Change Committee, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), is sure that he knows the name of the operation, but I am afraid he is wrong: its name is Operation Isotrope. In all probability, the units involved initially will be some of the batch 1 offshore patrol vessels that are permanently committed to home waters, probably with some P2000s.

As I said earlier in response to the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), when he pointed out that military warships have not previously been applicable in mid-channel cross-deckings, their height off the water makes them an inappropriate platform to be hands-on in the process; their role will be one of command and control, if, indeed, anything at sea. The reality is that, as I think my right hon. Friend appreciates, the Government have a large inventory of maritime assets. We argue that if the full spectrum of those maritime assets were brought to bear on this problem and cohered under a military command structure, that would provide a step change in capability.

My right hon. Friend will be disappointed that the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines will not be using pushback tactics, sonic weapons or whatever else but, as I have said clearly in response to previous questions, Border Force has been trialling those tactics and they may have a purpose. That is all part of the ongoing military estimate. I would argue that the deterrent effect is achieved not just through an ability to push back mid-channel, with all the problems that come with that. If we can guarantee that nobody gets to land in the UK on their own terms and that the system beyond that delivers an effective outcome that acts as a deterrent for those deciding to put themselves in the people traffickers’ hands, this approach could and should work.

My right hon. Friend will be frustrated that I am unable to unveil the full scope of the plan. That is partly because I do not know it. I also think that the Prime Minister would like to do that himself later in the month.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister said that the Royal Navy will not use sonic weapons, but long-range acoustic weapons are already fitted to Border Force vessels. As the Royal Navy has assumed operational control of Border Force, will he state that no Border Force sonic weapons will be used for migrant crossings? Will he also publish a rule of engagement for using sonic weapons against civilians? Even the leaking and spinning of that suggests a really dark force that we do not need in the debate.

[James Heappey]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. If Border Force vessels are fitted with a capability that the Royal Navy commander feels is inappropriate for use, he will not direct that it is used. That is his judgment. The hon. Gentleman, as the proud MP of the Royal Navy in Devonport, probably appreciates that in the MOD we deal with operational mission command and the Royal Navy uses its judgment to bring to bear what it thinks is best. I trust Rear Admiral Utley entirely to make the right decisions in that regard.

I will be honest with the hon. Gentleman: I am not entirely clear about the custom for publishing rules of engagement. Perhaps he will let me write to him with that in due course.