Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many and what proportion of applications to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy received since that scheme was established had, as at 16 December 2021, received an individual follow up email to indicate that (a) they were eligible, (b) that their case was being further investigated to assess eligibility, (c) that they were not considered eligible to apply, (d) that their application was incomplete or (e) that it was a duplicate application which would not be further considered.

The ARAP Scheme has been one of the most generous in the world, under which circa.1,300 Locally Employed Staff (LES) have been relocated to the UK since April; and Casework continues seven days a week to process circa. 99,000 applications.

All applications receive an email confirming receipt; and further correspondence, including the issuing of an application reference number is triggered once the team begin initial triaging of an application. Where applications are found to be incomplete, applicants are contacted by caseworkers; however, this is an ongoing dialogue with applicants for which instances are not tracked. A large number of applications are sifted out at an early stage of the process, for example because they are duplicates or incomplete. Therefore, the Department does not keep records of every application that is ruled out.