Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

A number of Select Committees—I pay tribute to their Chairs and members—have announced their own inquiries, but the failings we have seen most pressingly in recent months have been the failures of co-ordination between different Government Departments, and it would be a serious mistake to replicate the siloed approach that has failed so badly in the work this House does to ensure that lessons are learned and mistakes are put right.

If the Government do not learn from these mistakes, they will repeat them. The problem is that the failures over Afghanistan are indicative of a wider pattern—a foreign policy that is reactive rather than strategic, and improvised, not planned. Setting up a crisis centre after Kabul had fallen, ignoring phone calls in the build-up to the crisis and then rushing on a hastily organised regional tour, and cutting aid to Afghanistan only to have to restore it—this is a foreign policy of negligence that is careless about the consequences for people’s lives. It is disjointed and incoherent when we need principled and consistent leadership. We need a Government who can build consensus with international partners and who are trusted and credible on the world stage.

We must look forward as well as back to understand not just where Government policy has gone wrong, but to confront the reality of Taliban rule. This requires action on several fronts, starting with those left behind. We are so grateful to the soldiers, diplomats and civil servants who flew into danger to evacuate thousands as part of Operation Pitting—they remind us what courage looks like—but they are heartbroken at how many people were left behind. MPs and staff from across this House have been working around the clock to escalate the cases of British nationals and Afghans who were left behind. Many of them are still being hunted from door to door because of their connection to Britain and their support for our efforts. How on earth could it be that, when I asked the Foreign Secretary how many British nationals are in contact with his Department seeking help with evacuation, he did not know? Can the Minister tell us how many people that is today?

It is not just about the numbers; it is about the complexity of the cases. We are in touch with British nationals who are wheelchair-bound, while babies and one-year-olds have been left by themselves. One man is on dialysis, and he cannot follow the Defence Secretary’s advice to try to get to a border. Every Government have a duty above all to protect their own citizens. That there is still no advice for them is a first-order failure of Government, and it must be resolved.

We were infuriated and dispirited to learn that thousands of our emails had not even been opened by the Department. The Minister told MPs they would get a reply by tomorrow about British nationals stranded in Afghanistan. Will he respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and make sure that those replies are forthcoming? I did a ring around before I left the office, and I could not find a single MP who has had a substantive reply to those emails from the Foreign Office yet.

Is the Minister going to do that, or is he going to follow the appalling example of the Home Office? In a letter to MPs this week, it told us that we must

“deal with the circumstances as they are, not how we wish them to be”.

The letter confirmed that it is just

“logging the cases we have and considering how this data will be used in the future”,

and it asked MPs not to “pursue cases” any more. This is utterly shameful. For the Prime Minister to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that he is moving heaven and earth to sort this out, promising responses by close of play over a week ago, and then leave it to a junior Minister to tell us that the Afghans who supported and helped us—they went into the crowds and pulled people into the airport in the face of gunfire—are on their own is an absolute disgrace, and the Minister has to set it right today.

I know the Minister has made some limited progress with keeping the borders open, but there are immediate practical steps he must take now. Countries in the region tell me they need far more support with covid testing facilities for new arrivals and a greater UK presence at the borders. Because many of those travelling are considered special cases under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, there is no guarantee of onward travel to the UK, so they are not being admitted.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

There are 100 people with a connection to my seat in Reading who are still stuck in Afghanistan. My hon. Friend has spoken eloquently about the plight of these people, who urgently need our help. Does she agree that the Government should have taken much earlier action to secure access at land borders to get these people out?

[Lisa Nandy]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I want to pay tribute to Lord Ahmad for having, belatedly, rolled into action to try to overcome some of those difficulties, but I say to those on the Treasury Bench that far more can be done. I have a list of Afghan women MPs who need paperwork to cross the border to neighbouring states and onward travel to the UK. I know Lord Ahmad, the Minister for South Asia, has this list too; can the Minister replying to this debate assure me he will work with me so this can be resolved in the next 24 hours?

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I start by paying tribute to all those who served in Operation Pitting: the armed forces personnel who served so bravely and the civilians who were also present in country doing such an excellent job in very trying circumstances. I also pay tribute to all those who gave their lives during the whole Afghanistan campaign. My thoughts are with the families of those people and with those who returned with life-changing injuries.

I would like to speak in favour of this motion. I think we can all agree that the past few weeks have been dreadful, with the chaos around the fall of Kabul, the lack of planning, the effects on people who have served this country, the effects that we have seen with people applying for help through our offices and the chaos of the Government response. I mentioned earlier that we have more than 100 people with links to Reading East in need of help. Just one of those individuals has been evacuated from Afghanistan. That is clearly not good enough. I fully appreciate the difficult circumstances, but I hope that Ministers can reflect so that we can learn urgently the lessons of this dreadful period.

A wide range of evidence is already emerging, and it clearly makes the case for a proper and immediate inquiry, carried out in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) set out. First, however effective it was on the ground, the lack of planning and support from senior leaders in the Departments involved was apparent in the response. There is the fact that Ministers were sadly away on holiday, and the permanent secretary was away at the same time, and did not return urgently to respond.

There was a range of other factors. There was the lack of anticipation of the need to get people across the land borders at an earlier stage, when other countries had started to make preparations for that. As far as I understand it, both Germany and the United States took much more urgent action at an earlier stage in the crisis to secure safe passage at land borders for people leaving Afghanistan. There is the fact that internal assessments also indicated, from what we understand from the Chair of the Select Committee, that there were serious problems at a much earlier stage than Ministers admitted. All those things point to the need for an urgent and serious inquiry.

The effects domestically in the UK may also be subject matter for that inquiry. As Ministers may know themselves, many of the facilities that those arriving to the UK from Afghanistan are put in appear to be substandard or poor quality. That is a serious issue. We need to provide better support for Afghans arriving in the UK who have so nobly served the UK.

Moving forward, we must also consider a range of other points urgently, such as the effect of the refugee crisis on neighbouring countries—my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan made sensible points about the effects on Pakistan and other countries in the region—and the need for covid support and testing as well as logistical support. As several hon. Members said, we must also think about the wider effects on UK foreign policy, our relationship with the Indo-Pacific region and our relationship with our closest allies. All those are highly pertinent and important areas for discussion and investigation by the type of process that my hon. Friend proposes.

In conclusion, I pay tribute once again to the forces and civilians who helped with Operation Pitting and the wider Afghan campaign. However, it is quite clear to those of us who have followed the issue in detail that Ministers have shown a lack of leadership and that, crucially, there was a lack of planning. There is an urgent need for a serious and thorough investigation.