Because, to borrow a phrase from the Minister, this is a small but perfectly formed Westminster Hall gathering, we will start the Back-Bench wind-ups at 2.28 pm. Jim will do no more than 20 minutes and Debbie will do no more than five. The Minister has said—I think he will want to give a full answer—that if there is any chance we can squeeze out an extra two minutes for him, that would be good. I will manage the other three contributions, but just try to give the Minister a little extra time. I hope that is all right with the Labour Front Bench.
That this House has considered Pathway 3 of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.
It is an absolute pleasure to speak in this debate, Sir Charles. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to raise this essential issue. I am pleased to see many right hon. and hon. Members here to make contributions today, and we know why: because this is a critical issue. In the main Chamber today the Minister made a reference to it in an urgent question. I look across at the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). He kept his eyes down, so I could not catch whether he was happy or not, but perhaps today we will get some positivity. We will wait to see what happens.
There has been massive parliamentary attention on Afghan relocation schemes in recent weeks, both here and in the other place. That is important, because nearly 18 months after the fall of Kabul, the Afghan citizens relocation scheme still has thousands of available places. With respect to hon. Members present, it is important for those who are spending their lives hiding in Afghanistan, waiting and hoping for a decision on their expression of interest in claiming asylum in the UK.
For 18 years, tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan worked alongside British citizens to strengthen democracy and create a country where it was possible for women to work or obtain an education. It grieves me how the Afghanistan authorities treat women and others. It is disgraceful. They cannot get an education and cannot build a future. Afghan religious minorities are not allowed to operate or worship their God as they would like to.
A case that I have raised in this House many times has been with my office from August last year when troops were withdrawn, and still there is no end in sight.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?
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.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. What appals me is the fact that we sought assurances in that debate, we received them, and we seemed to be finally making progress—I will go into that in a bit more detail later. The debate was on the Wednesday afternoon, and then I was phoned on the Thursday evening and informed by a Guardian journalist that the Government were retracting those assurances. We now have a mish-mash of assurances, some of which are in Hansard and some of which are not. That is one of the things we need to sort out in this debate—clarity—and I am looking forward to my right hon. Friend the Minister providing it.
In a couple of sentences, the hon. Gentleman has succinctly summarised where we were last Wednesday and where we are today. Unfortunately, we have not seen the clarity that is necessary.
There are questions to ask. How many people have been accepted under the ACRS? How many people fit into each category? How many of those accepted are still in Afghanistan, living under the threat of violence from the Taliban? Will the scheme continue in 2023, and when will the scheme finally open to at-risk minority groups, such as religious minorities, the Hazaras and LGBT people? Will the estimate of 20,000 still be reached? The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay covered the issues surrounding British contractors so well last week.
On 30 September 2022, a suicide bomb exploded at the Kaaj Educational Centre in Kabul. The school is in the Hazara district and was packed with hundreds of girls preparing for exams to enter university—young girls just wanting to have a life and to plan a way forward. They were brutally attacked, and some of them were killed. Some 54 students were killed, and over 100 were injured.
There has been a long history of the Taliban targeting the Hazara Muslims. Recent years have seen an increase in attacks, and at least 700 Hazaras have been killed by the Taliban or Islamic State Khorasan since August 2021. There appears to be a deliberate targeting of young Hazara girls—not just in violent attacks, but in an attempt to rob the community of ladies and young girls. I have three granddaughters, and I want them to have opportunities. If they were living in Afghanistan, they would not have any opportunities—that is a fact.
Taliban fighters have sought to remove girls from their communities through forced marriages, rape and forced engagements. I was shocked to find out that in some cases, those girls have been as young—it is hard to even say it—as three years old. What is going on in this world when we hear things like that? In Afghanistan, we see a clear attempt to destroy the Hazara community using violence and killings, but also through the forcible transfer of children out of the group; both acts can be indicators of genocide. The Hazaras are far from the only group at risk, but we need them to feature in this process.
As always, it is lovely to see you in the Chair, Sir Charles. I congratulate my dear friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate. He is always the last person to intervene in debates in the House, but on this occasion he was the first speaker. He has spent his life challenging and trying to make right injustice, not just in our constituencies and our country but across the world. He is an emblem of what being an MP should be about.
I should refer to the register of interests, as I am the vice chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afghanistan. But my interest stems from the fact that one of my caseworkers is originally from Afghanistan. She was a judge and had to leave; there were two attempts to assassinate her because she had the audacity to set up education centres for women and girls. My passion for the subject is driven by her and I want to commend her for that.
Since the evacuation, Operation Pitting, in August 2021, Afghanistan has faced the worst political, economic and social conditions in 30 years. The brunt of that has been felt by women—it is absolutely appalling. There are 60 oral and written decrees restricting women’s lives: removing their participation in secondary and higher education and their employment in Afghan institutions; preventing travel without a male relative; limiting social lives and activities, including the right to protest and freedom of speech; and dictating what women wear. Can we imagine that? I know there are few women in the Chamber, but could the men in the Chamber imagine if that happened to them? It is absolutely horrendous.
Many of us will have seen on social media the public floggings meted out to women who dare to contravene any of those diktats. We have seen the results of the torture of women who have deemed to have stepped even further. Earlier this week, we learned about the murder of Mursal Nabizada, a human rights advocate, somebody who Marzia knew and a former member of the Afghan Parliament—the cowardice of the men who gunned her and her bodyguard down! I wanted to speak in the debate because unless we do something about the resettlement scheme that our Government committed to back in 2021, we will see more and more women killed—a femicide, if you like. I do not use that phrase lightly.
Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)
Thank you for being absolutely on five minutes. I will give the three Back-Bench colleagues 10 minutes each, but I will stop them at 10.
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.
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.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), on securing the debate, which is incredibly important. We have debated the issue again and again, because unfortunately we have not so far had a satisfactory outcome.
The Taliban’s control of Afghanistan is devastating for millions of people. That is especially true for women and girls, who fear for their lives. Once again, their liberties and rights are being extinguished. Since the Taliban returned to power, women have been removed from nearly all areas of public life. Girls are banned from going to high school, women are largely restricted from working outside the home and a male chaperone must accompany women when they travel long distances. The draconian rules put in place by the Taliban constrain women’s ability to earn a living, to access healthcare and education, to escape violence and to exercise their rights. I was outraged to hear about the killing of former Afghan MP Mursal Nabizada earlier this week. In Afghanistan, no woman is safe.
A country’s morality is defined by how it treats those in need. When leaving Afghanistan, the Government promised to do everything it could to support those who helped the UK’s mission. That included setting up bespoke Afghan resettlement schemes focusing on the most vulnerable, in particular women and children. Afghans put their lives at risk for our country.
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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.
Other religious minorities have also been devastated under the Taliban. The number of Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan fell from 400 to 150 in three years, with attacks by IS-K against both communities having been reported. There used to be 15,000 Christians in Afghanistan, but 13,000 of those have relocated to the United States of America, Albania or Brazil. The US scheme was set up after the ACRS, using in part the model that the UK promoted in our resettlement scheme—they liked our model so much that they made it their model for bringing people in. I speak up for the Hazaras, the Muslims, the Christians and others, because Christian minorities have to be protected if they are not going to get protection in Afghanistan. Since 2004, Afghanistan had enshrined freedom of religion within its constitution. Today, however, religious diversity in the country has been all but extinguished, with those who remain facing the risk of attacks, atrocity crimes or charges under sharia.
As well as religious minorities, thousands of pro-democracy activists have been left at risk. Some are journalists and some are activists, but many were excluded from the list, and I, like others, want them to be included on it. Members of these groups cannot sit around for five years waiting for a decision; they cannot wait. There is an urgency about this, and an ache among those of us who are speaking for a response from the Minister about where we are. In the year that the ACRS opened, not a single British Council contractor, GardaWorld contractor, Chevening alumnus or member of an at-risk minority was brought out of Afghanistan under pathway 3. What? Why have a scheme if it does not work? It is so frustrating. I am not being critical and nasty—you know that is not in my nature, Sir Charles—but I feel an absolute frustration with where we are.
The Scottish Refugee Council—believe it or not, I genuinely look to Scotland to see what it does, because many times it is far ahead of us—has reported that between January and June 2022, more than 2,000 Afghans sought safety in the UK by making a small boat crossing across the channel. These are desperate asylum seekers, not economic migrants; they are people who just want to live and to have a future. That report also notes that 97% of asylum claims from Afghans who have made those crossings have been successful.
The delay in opening safe migration routes for Afghanistan has directly contributed to some of the most vulnerable groups in the world risking their lives by paying criminal gangs to cross the English channel in a small boat. At best, a lack of clarity and urgency in the scheme is causing more fear, uncertainty and suffering for some of the most at-risk groups in Afghanistan. At worst, the delay and the lack of access are directly putting lives at risk. What is happening in Afghanistan is a humanitarian disaster on an immense level—a level of intensity that cannot be imagined, in my mind at least. A rapid response to disasters is key to saving lives, and we need that urgency. We need to see that rapid response, with our Government and our Minister working hard to make that happen.
However, Afghanistan is not the only humanitarian disaster that the UK Government are responding to. Two months after the opening of the ACRS, Russia invaded Ukraine. That invasion triggered the largest mass migration in Europe since the second world war as refugees fled Ukraine. I commend the Government’s quick action in that case, setting up the Ukrainian resettlement pathway, and I am proud of the response of my community, with many in Strangford supporting and hosting Ukrainians. We have a missionary society, Faith in Action, led by Donald and Jacqui Fleming and a fella called Tinsley. Those people are part of that response, and we have brought many Ukrainian asylum seekers—they are not here forever, but only for a certain period of time—to my town of Newtownards and across Northern Ireland, supported by church groups.
There is a marked difference in how the Government have responded through the two schemes. It has been reported by the BBC that fewer than 10 staff in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office are working on ACRS. In contrast, there is a team of 50 staff working on behalf of Ukrainians. To clarify, I am not saying that there should not be such a large team working on the Ukrainian scheme—I am glad that there is—but why is there not such a large team working for Afghans as well?
I understand that the Government’s role is to set priorities, and that many priorities have been re-evaluated in the light of Russia’s aggression. I still believe passionately that we are a generous country and, as far as I am aware, no statement has been made to the House on changes to the ACRS. However, one year on, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is clearly not working. That is the situation and why I have secured the debate to request change on behalf of those people.
Last week, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay highlighted the failure to support British Council contractors who were being prioritised in 2022. The scheme fails to support minorities, leaving many with an uncertain future, forced to live in hiding, suffering regular attacks and worrying for their lives, not knowing what tomorrow brings, which concerns me. They are even faced with potential genocidal activities, as there has been against the Hazaras, Christians and others.
Looking to the next year of the scheme, it is vital that more information is made available and guidance for pathway 3 needs to be publicised. We need to fulfil the promises we made to British Council contractors and others employed to help further democracy in Afghanistan. I pray for Afghanistan and many other countries across the world every day, because I believe in prayer and that God gives us a job to do. While prayer is important, it is not the only thing that matters. Physical endeavours from our Government are also important.
I will draw my remarks to a conclusion as I made a commitment to you, Sir Charles, to keep to 20 minutes. More needs to be done to protect the three vulnerable groups that pathway 3 was built around. A stronger intervention is needed in light of the credible risk of genocide against the Hazaras. The all-party parliamentary group on Hazaras does fantastic work and the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) has also raised the issue of Hazaras in the House.
I will pose some challenging questions for the Minister, but I do not wish to be judgmental. First, given the resourcing allocated to the FCDO and the impact of the crisis in Ukraine, is the ACRS still a priority for the Government? Secondly, does the Minister agree that we have a moral duty to help those who supported the British effort in Afghanistan and those at greatest risk because of their identity? Thirdly, with the evidence highlighted by the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee, the Hazara inquiry and others, is there enough evidence for the Minister to recognise the potential risk of genocide in Afghanistan in the near future? Fourthly, will the ACRS continue in 2023 and will it finally include at-risk minority groups, such as the Hazaras, the Christians and members of the LGBT community, as well as journalists who endeavoured to make Afghanistan a better country when Britain and other western nations tried to introduce democracy to Afghanistan?
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate and giving me the chance to promote the case I have outlined. I look forward to the contributions from other hon. Members, including the shadow spokespeople. We are all here with the same message, Sir Charles: we need urgency, let us help those people and let us do it right now.
There are 70 women, former Afghan judges, who had that job taken from them in 2021 and are in hiding in Afghanistan. They sent many of the current Taliban gunmen to prison for a variety of abuses and offences. Those judges are on the Taliban’s hitlist, and if we do not do anything they will surely be targeted and gunned down. I urge the Minister to act. We promised in 2021 to resettle 20,000 people, and those women should be high on that list. We have settled just over 6,000, all under the first pathway apart from four. It is not good enough.
I agree with the hon. Member for Strangford that the Minister has a history of being an excellent advocate in this regard. Will he please indicate how many staff will be dedicated to this? I endorse the questions that have been asked by the hon. Member. We should not compare different schemes, but one cannot help but notice the difference between the attention that Ukraine has received and this.
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.
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.