Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme: Pathway 3

Margaret Ferrier Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

A case that I have raised in this House many times has been with my office from August last year when troops were withdrawn, and still there is no end in sight. My constituent’s young wife, the daughter of an allied forces translator, was not deemed to be eligible for any pathway scheme and is now waiting for approval on a spousal visa. Does the hon. Member agree that still, a year and a half on, the policy for Afghan citizens remains too opaque and difficult to navigate?

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly do. I am sure that when the Minister responds, such questions will be fully answered. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise that issue.

We all know what happened when the rapid Taliban advance in 2021 culminated in the fall of Kabul and Operation Pitting. We also know that as these events unfolded, the UK Government implemented the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and, exactly one year ago, the Afghan citizens relocation scheme. This debate serves as a moment to look back on the last year and assess, as the hon. Lady said, how far we have moved on that; many of us feel that we have not moved.

The ACRS has three pathways. The first is for people who have already been airlifted out of Afghanistan—there were some of those—and now need help settling in the UK. The second is for those who have already escaped to a third country, such as Pakistan, and are in the hands of the UNHCR. The third is the one that probably reflects our British values the most. It is no secret that I am very proud to be British. I look upon this great nation as a nation that delivers on its compassion and understanding, and therefore I want this scheme to be implemented in its totality. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, who will follow me, will confirm that as well. We have a real problem. For those who have been identified as belonging to a particularly vulnerable group, two issues emerge in relation to pathway 3 time and time again. The first is a lack of clarity, and the second is a lack of urgency. Where is it? I cannot see it at all.

When the scheme was launched, a core component of pathway 3 was the focus on providing safe asylum routes to help members of minorities who were specifically identified as being at the most risk under Taliban rule, and I give the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay lots of credit for consistently speaking in defence of the scheme. The three groups identified were religious minorities, members of the LGBT community and pro-democracy activists. All three groups were deemed to be under a high risk of a violent attack but had been excluded from the ARAP scheme.

Even at the outset of ACRS, there was confusion about when people could expect to start receiving help. The scheme launched with the intended aim of resettling 20,000 people in five years. However, Afghans were only allowed to register an expression of interest seven months after the scheme formally opened. In the short time that that window was open, over 11,400 expressions of interest were submitted under pathway 3. The vast majority of those who expressed an interest had to wait, even though their lives were in danger. I have the utmost respect for the Minister, but that is why we are so frustrated about where we are.

The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay is likely to go into greater depth on this issue, and I want to give him lots of time to put forward his understanding of where the scheme is and where it is going. Last Wednesday, he led a Westminster Hall debate on British Council contractors who are eligible for pathway 3. Indeed, at the opening of the scheme, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) stated that, alongside GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni, they would be the priority group for 2022. Some 200 teachers, security guards and frontline staff were to be offered a safe haven in the UK alongside family members. These people represented those who worked on the frontline, who were recruited to teach British values across Afghanistan. They were people who we—this country and the United Kingdom Government—left behind, and it is clear that we owe a duty to them. As such, I was delighted to hear the Minister confirm during last week’s debate that half the contractors have had their applications granted. Maybe I will leave that point to the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay.

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[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on calling the debate.

This is a very unfortunate situation. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister is an honourable man, and he has a good reputation when it comes to compassion and international aid, but I am afraid that he is overseeing, or is at least in part responsible for, a scheme that is simply not working. As was well pointed out earlier, the scheme was introduced with great fanfare a year ago, and to our knowledge it has not helped one person. Worse, there seems to be a lack of clarity about where we are with it.

Last Wednesday’s debate has been referred to a few times. We debated the ACRS scheme pathway 3 as it related to 200 British Council contractors who were stuck in Afghanistan. They are moving from safe house to safe house, and many of them are in fear of their lives, as they are being hunted. We have all had some harrowing stories and emails about how, for example, professors could not go to a hospital with their daughters, and a daughter subsequently dying because the Taliban had ringed the hospital. I opposed the mission of nation building in Afghanistan, but whatever one thinks of the mission, these people were brave enough to put their head above the parapet and say, “We will help to promote western/British values”—whether by teaching English, dealing with women’s equal rights or by other means. To many of them, if not all, if feels that we have turned our back on them.

I sought four assurances from the Minister last Wednesday. Have 100 of the 200 contractors been given the go-ahead to go to the border? Will the lack of paperwork not impede their entry into a third country? Will the ball now get rolling for the second 100, who had not heard anything after their initial application? They are quite literally in the dark. Finally, can we please ensure that talk of quotas—particularly the quota of 1,500 not just for the British Council but for the GardaWorld workforce and Chevening scholars, whom I also want to include, because we are thinking of them as well—will not impede people’s leaving if they have a right to do so under the scheme? I fully appreciate that there are sensitivities in relation to the issue of paperwork, so I will not dwell on or put the Government in a difficult situation on that. Sometimes things are best understood rather than relayed in detail in a debate like this, because there are local sensitivities with one or two third-party countries.

We received those assurances. It was on the record; it was quite categorical. Those who participated in the debate went away thinking, “Finally, we are making progress.” That was Wednesday afternoon.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Mr Baron]

No. If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will crack on, because I want to ensure that I stay within my 10 minutes—for everybody’s sake. I apologise, and I am sure that she will make her point in due course.

The debate was on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday evening, I was phoned by a journalist, who told me that the Government were now retracting all those points and would be correcting Hansard. I did not get confirmation of that from the Government until Friday afternoon. I have the transcript. Hansard has allowed some corrections but not others, so we now have a mishmash of assurances given, some retracted through Hansard and some not. This is where I seek clarity from the Minister. This is causing great distress, not just for people here who are passionate about the issue, but most importantly for the people in the country who are trying to get out.

At the moment, marrying up the Government’s corrections —those that have been accepted by Hansard, but also those that were not, and therefore referring back to Wednesday’s debate—we seem to have the following situation. It is not 100 who have been given the go-ahead. I seek clarification on this, and I look to my right hon. Friend the Minister’s team to pass whatever notes that they can by way of clarification. This is the situation: on the first assurance, the number was not 100; instead, 47 have been told to head for the border. That is the latest figure. We do not know precisely what state that is in, in the sense of how many have reached a third country or whatever, but we know that 47—according to the correction—have been granted and told, “Right, off you go.”

I have mentioned the paperwork, which we will not talk about. My understanding, however, without going into any further detail, is that a lack of paperwork will not impede entry—exit from Afghanistan is one thing, and entry to a third country another one, but it will not impede entry here. That is how the situation stands, I believe.

The third assurance was about the second 100 of the 200 British Council contractors, who have not heard anything at all since applying, which was a year or so ago. They are still in the dark, according to the correction. In other words, they have not been contacted, despite us being told that some of them had been. I wait for clarification.

The final point was about quotas. In Hansard, last Wednesday the Minister made the point—this stands, because it has not been corrected; Hansard is not allowed to be corrected—that the quotas talk of 1,500 for the ACRS pathway 3, for those three groups that we have mentioned, still stands. Personally, I find that distasteful. It is almost shameful, because there was no mention of quotas when we asked people in Afghanistan to volunteer and no mention of quotas when it came to the extent of their courage in actually supporting the mission in the country. Yet here we are, talking about 1,500 as a quota, when we cannot really put a quota or figure on anything like that

I ask the Minister to address that point specifically. I know it is a little further down the line, because we have to start getting people out first, but I really do not want to hear any news about quotas, or the Government saying that people will have to wait in danger further, because last week the Minister was talking about a second iteration of the scheme. I seek that clarification from the Minister. I will finish early, but I hope he will allow time so that we can make the intervention if we do not think that we have it.

In summary, I say to the Minister: we need clarity and we need to ensure that we set the record straight, so that people not just here but, most importantly, in Afghanistan know where they stand. Above all else, if it is still correct that 47 have been given the go-ahead, roughly 150 British Council contractors and their families —also, GardaWorld workers and Chevening scholars—remain in the dark and have not been told anything. We need to get this sorted now. They need to be contacted and told that they can head for the border, paperwork or not. I seek those assurances from the Minister when he makes his contribution.

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[Margaret Ferrier]

The second pathway of the scheme is the only one that offers refugee status to those who are resettled in the UK. Pathway 3 is specifically for individuals seen to be particularly at risk in the region, but it does not offer refugee status. Does the hon. Member agree that that downplays the severity of harm faced by those eligible for pathway 3, and it could be used to excuse the low numbers resettled under what is a crucial aspect of the scheme?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I will come on to the three different pathways, but I agree. The Government underestimate the danger that absolutely everybody in Afghanistan still lives under, and we need to do more.

Pathway 1 is for those who have effectively already been settled in the UK. Pathway 2 is for those who have been referred by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Pathway 3 is for those who worked for or were affiliated with the British Government. None of those promises were exactly generous—pitiful, even—but the Government did not even fulfil them. We talk a lot about broken promises in this place. These are broken promises that risk lives.

The Government say that over 20,000 Afghan refugees have been resettled in the UK. However, many of those places have been granted to people who were already here. Women and girls in Afghanistan were meant to be a priority, yet they have been left without a specific route to apply to the scheme. In July last year, Foreign Office officials admitted that many of those who helped our country would not have the opportunity to resettle in the UK. How good is that?

Thousands of those who have arrived remain stuck in hotels up and down the country. Most of them have been there for well over a year now. One refugee compared living in one of those hotels to living in a prison. Not a single person has been accepted and evacuated from Afghanistan under pathway 3. Although pathway 3 makes provision for particularly vulnerable minority groups, those groups were excluded from the 1,500 places offered in 2022, and there has been no clarification on when places will be offered to them.

The Home Office has published some vague intention to work with international partners and non-governmental organisations to welcome wider groups of people who are at risk in Afghanistan, but no details have yet been released. It is a thin veil trying to disguise that the Government intend to do very little, or nothing. Only about eight members of staff are working on the Afghan resettlement scheme in the Foreign Office. In sharp contrast, the Government were recently able to find 400 new processing staff for the scheme to target Albanians, and £140 million to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.