Welcomed the Foreign Secretary’s speech on foreign policy, highlighted the role of the British Council in building international connections. Stressed urgency due to lives at risk; 200 contractors still stuck since Operation Pitting with no progress made despite efforts through regular channels.

Expressed deep concern about remaining British Council contractors in Afghanistan following government's evacuation. Cited a Guardian report indicating no ACRS application approvals since the programme opened, fewer than 10 staff working on the scheme at FCDO.

Is there not a fundamental problem with talking about safe and legal routes for people who, if they expose themselves to the Taliban, are at risk because of that very fact? Last Thursday evening, I was at the Last Supper gallery to attend a photographic exhibition organised by the Sulha Alliance on behalf of Afghan interpreters, several of whom were there, including one who had been shot and another whose brother had not got out and had been murdered. The photographer, Andy Barnham, felt it necessary to anonymise the photographs because of the risks of identification. Do the Government not have to come up with a better idea for how to extract people who are at risk as a result of helping us, without them having to declare themselves openly and thus put themselves in more peril?

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing this important urgent question. It is morally indefensible that, more than a year after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, there are still innocent Afghans who worked for the British Government and military who have received zero support from this Government and the Home Office. It is not acceptable to use terms such as “something like.” Exactly how many former British Council staff, including support staff, are still living in Afghanistan in fear of their lives and livelihoods? When the Government say they have brought 6,300 Afghans to “safety,” what exactly does that mean? How many of them are former British Council employees? The Taliban’s so-called kill list is an active threat. Do the Government know how many of their former employees are on that list? Finally, it is appropriate that 540 staff are working on the Ukraine schemes but, if the Government are taking Afghanistan as seriously as they are supposed to be, why do the figures show a maximum of eight people working on the Afghan schemes?

On 20 January 2022 there was an urgent question on British Council staff, at which I told the then Minister of State for Asia, the right hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling), that “many of us have thousands of constituents—in my case, up to 150—who have relatives and friends who have worked for the British in Afghanistan and who are in terrible need of resettlement to this country. The ARAP scheme and the ACRS have done very little to bring many, if any, of my constituents’ relatives and friends away from the horror going on in Afghanistan.” The Minister pointed out that the ACRS was open and “will prioritise those who have assisted the UK efforts in Afghanistan and those who have stood up for values such as democracy, women’s rights, freedom of speech and the rule of law, as well as vulnerable people, including women and girls who are at risk and members of minority groups who are at risk.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2022; Vol. 707, c. 505-6.] We have seen that pathway 3 was open not from January but from June. Six months later, not one person has been settled in this country.

The Minister knows that this Government have legislated to make it illegal for anyone seeking asylum to enter this country by any means apart from safe and legal routes. Indeed, the entire moral basis—such as it is—for the claim that this Government are meeting our international asylum obligations rests on safe and legal routes. Given that, how can the Minister speak of pride in a safe route that is so manifestly and entirely failing? It is failing those who are at risk of persecution for promoting British values through the British Council. What does he suggest they do?

I disagree with the Minister that he is a poor replacement for his colleague at the Dispatch Box—I think he would bring a compassionate, informed and patriotic approach to this portfolio, if it were his. Perhaps he can explain why, instead of sending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to Rwanda with nothing to show for it, the Government do not spend just a fraction of that money on expediting the safe evacuation of those who risked their lives to host and protect UK service personnel and civilians in Afghanistan.

The Minister is well known for his compassion and understanding of these issues in this House. I say that in all honesty; he knows it and everyone else knows it. How many people have begun the ACRS scheme, have been given their reference number and are on stand-by, and yet have heard nothing over the last year that the scheme has been operating? How can he change the message sent to those we asked to help us, because we made promises and then appeared to abandon them when our aims were met? It is very sad.