Afghanistan

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

It is more than four years since the previous Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, launched on behalf of this country the Afghan relocations and assistance policy with the full support of this House. There has been ample time for anyone who could conceivably believe they might qualify to make their application. None of those schemes, including ARAP, was ever conceived or designed to last in perpetuity, which is why we closed them at the beginning of this month to any new applicants, and why I have taken the decision, based on Rimmer and the other factors I have identified, to end the ARR scheme today. On the ARAP applicants—the sort of Afghans whom the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about—we will complete any remaining applications that are in our system waiting to be processed. On the Triples, we will complete the second phase of the review that we have given a commitment to them and to this House to undertake.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s support for parliamentary transparency and for the work of the Committee corridor in this House. I have no doubt that my excellent colleagues who chair the various Committees that are responsible will do a thorough job of examining this matter, and I hope that the Secretary of State will facilitate the sharing of any information that may need to be handled in a sensitive manner. When Labour was last in government, there were a number of breaches of this nature; a predecessor of his asked to be notified of every one, and most were due to human error. It is great that we are updating the IT systems and dealing with the security, but could the Secretary of State touch on the measures that will be put in place to guard against the human error that will inevitably creep in?