Asked by: Baroness Buscombe (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many children of Afghan refugees attending schools in or near army barracks across the UK are being taught in classes segregated by sex.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Wendy Chamberlain (Liberal Democrat - North East Fife)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if her Department has any plans to provide financial support to the operations of UNHCR in Afghanistan.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK remains one of the largest donors to Afghanistan, providing £151 million in aid for the 2025/26 financial year. The UK does not currently directly fund United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) operations in Afghanistan, but we have supported those operations indirectly via pooled funds managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Future funding allocations for UN and non-governmental organisation partners in Afghanistan will be set out in the normal way in due course.
Asked by: Euan Stainbank (Labour - Falkirk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her Statement on Asylum Policy of 17 of November, Official Report column 509, which means other than sponsorship will be opened up to new, capped, safe and legal routes for asylum seekers.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The UK has rightly played its part alongside other countries in response to crises such as Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan.
As set out in the policy statement, in addition to the sponsorship pathways, we are developing new capped safe and legal routes at pace for refugees and displaced people to access the UK for work and study purposes.
This approach remains flexible to respond to global crises, as demonstrated by recent extensions to the Ukraine scheme and targeted support for individuals affected by conflicts in Gaza.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many Afghans were brought to the UK via the Afghan Response Route in each month the scheme was open.
Answered by Luke Pollard - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
As the responsible Department, the Home Office produce quarterly statistics for immigration. These statistics are broken down by the route in which the individual entered the UK. The Afghan Response Route (ARR) is included and can be accessed via the link below:
safe-legal-routes-summary-tables-jun-2025.ods
As of 4 July 2025, the ARR is closed.
This Government continues to support the Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP) and is taking seriously our commitment to deliver on our promise to our Afghan friends and allies – many of whom stood side-by-side with the UK's Armed Forces in Afghanistan. By the end of this Parliament, we aim to have successfully honoured our obligation to complete relocations of eligible persons.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to the Answer of 12 May 2025 to Question 49543, how many of the houses reacquired by his Department in January 2025 from Annington Homes have been used to house Afghans brought to the UK via (a) the Afghan Resettlement Programme and (b) separately as a subset of the Afghan Response Route.
Answered by Luke Pollard - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Surplus SFA not needed for our personnel have been used in certain circumstances. 795 of the 36,000 properties bought back from Annington Homes in January 2025 have been used to house Afghans who worked alongside out troops in Afghanistan who have been brought to the UK via the Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARAP).
I refer the honourable member to the answer to PQ 72330 which provides the number of Afghan Response Route (ARR) Eligible Persons (EP) accommodated on the Defence Estate on 4 September 2025. The Department does not hold data on which former Annington Homes properties are occupied by ARR EPs.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in what region Afghans resettled through the Afghanistan Response Route have been located.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The regular quarterly Immigration System Statistics provide details on how many individuals have been resettled to the UK broken down by resettlement route, region and local authority area. The number of people resettled under the Afghanistan Resettlement Programme (which includes consolidated data on the ‘Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy,’ ‘Afghan Citizens Relocation Scheme’ and ‘Afghan Response Route’) can be accessed at tab ‘Reg_D02’ of the following table: Regional and local authority data on immigration groups, year ending June 2025.
Asked by: Kirsteen Sullivan (Labour (Co-op) - Bathgate and Linlithgow)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking to help ensure the safety of Afghans living in the UK, in the context of the data breach relating to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy in 2022.
Answered by Luke Pollard - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Anyone potentially affected by this data incident, and whose contact details are known by the Ministry of Defence, in the UK and elsewhere, has been notified and provided with security advice. The Government has taken appropriate actions in line with the level of risk, and the recent Rimmer Review concluded that it is unlikely that those impacted by the data incident are at an increased risk.
Further information regarding the incident and the security advice can be found on the GOV.UK website at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/data-incident-affecting-applicants-to-the-afghan-relocations-and-assistance-policy-scheme-and-afghanistan-locally-employed-staff-ex-gratia-scheme.
More broadly, we continue to work closely with the Home Office, police, local authorities and partners to ensure that there is support and information available to keep all new Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP) arrivals, including for those affected by the data incident, safe in the UK.
Asked by: Helen Maguire (Liberal Democrat - Epsom and Ewell)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, why (a) notice or (b) a transition period was given for the closure of the ARAP scheme.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) Scheme was not created to be an open-ended scheme, and as such had strict eligibility criteria for applicants to meet before they would be offered relocation.
In statements made by the Ministry of Defence in December 2024 and May 2025, intent for scheme closure was reiterated. In the Written Ministerial Statement on 1 July 2025, we explained that throughout the previous year, we have regularly assessed progress, and carefully considered the right time to stop taking on new applications. As explained in that statement, we considered that we had reached the right point. Given the wider context, it was not considered necessary to provide for any transitional period.
Asked by: Baroness Hoey (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many asylum seekers and refugees have been dispersed by the Home Office to Northern Ireland in each of the past five years, and how many from Syria, Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine in the relevant official schemes.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The number of supported asylum seekers and refugees in Northern Ireland in each of the past five years were as follows:
Immigration group | As at 31 March 2021 | As at 31 March 2022 | As at 31 March 2023 | As at 31 March 2024 | As at 31 March 2025 |
Supported Asylum seekers | 912 | 1,404 | 3,030 | 2,765 | 2,637 |
Afghan Resettlement Programme | Scheme not open | Data not available | Data not available | 203 | 305 |
Homes for Ukraine (arrivals) | Scheme not open | Data not available | Data not available | 1,502 | 1,949 |
Please note that Asylum seekers are accommodated in Northern Ireland only if they apply for asylum there. These figures are a snapshot as at 31 March for the last 5 years.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the lessons learned from international examples of the use of limited humanitarian visas to allow people to apply for asylum from their country of origin.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK has a proud history of providing protection for those who need it through a number of safe and legal routes. However, there is no provision within our Immigration Rules for someone to be allowed to travel to the UK to seek asylum or temporary refuge. Whilst we sympathise with people in many difficult situations around the world, we are not bound to consider asylum claims from the very large numbers of people overseas who might like to come here. Those who need international protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach – that is the fastest route to safety.
The UK continues to welcome refugees and people in need through our existing global resettlement schemes which include the UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS), Community Sponsorship and the Mandate Resettlement Scheme. Alongside these schemes, we operate specific schemes for those fleeing Ukraine and Afghanistan, and an immigration route for British National (overseas) status holders from Hong Kong.
There are additional safe and legal routes for people to come to the UK should they wish to join family members here, work or study.