Afghanistan

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the situation in Afghanistan.

May I begin by thanking you, Mr Speaker, and all the parliamentary staff for enabling us to meet this morning? Before I turn to today’s debate, I am sure the House will want to join you, Mr Speaker, and me in sending our condolences to the family and friends of those killed in the appalling shooting in Plymouth last week. Investigations are of course continuing, but we will learn every possible lesson from this tragedy.

I know that Members across the House share my concern about the situation in Afghanistan, the issues it raises for our own security and the fears of many remaining in that country, especially women and children. The sacrifice in Afghanistan is seared into our national consciousness, with 150,000 people serving there from across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, including a number of Members in all parts of the House, whose voices will be particularly important today. So it is absolutely right that we should come together for this debate.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

As someone who opposed this nation-building intervention, I believe that it now brings its responsibilities. Will the Prime Minister assure me that, in addition to getting our nationals out safely, and in offering a generous welcome to the many refugees, all necessary resources will be given to those Afghans and others who helped the British Council in its work, including the promotion of women’s rights? Many are in fear of their lives—of retribution from the Taliban. The Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme is slow-moving at the moment. Will he commit the necessary resource, because the window of opportunity is narrow and no one must be left behind.

[Mr Speaker]

We have got the point. May I remind Members that if you are going to intervene, you have got to be short. If you intervene more than twice, you will understand why you have gone down the list—if there was one. [Laughter.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

We have all in Parliament been horrified by recent developments, from the harrowing scenes at Kabul airport to the reports of retribution from the Taliban, the shambles of an exit strategy and the failure of the international community at this critical point. It is self-evident that our mistaken intervention now brings its responsibilities, and whatever the strategic long-term lessons, the first priority now must be to save lives. So I welcome what the Government are doing to get our nationals out, but I urge them, as many hon. Members have done today, to be generous in our welcome of the many refugees who are fleeing in fear of their lives.

I do worry about arbitrary figures—an extra 5,000—at this point, because we simply do not know the scale of the humanitarian disaster. I urge the Government to keep an open mind on that. We have to be generous. If other nations will not do their fair share, we have to go beyond our fair share in ensuring that we live up to those obligations and responsibilities. That is a product of our 20-year intervention.

I would also urge the Foreign Secretary, please, to do what he can to help all those who have assisted the UK in Afghanistan—not just the military. As he knows, I chair the all-party group on the British Council, and we are particularly concerned about the slow progress of the ARAP scheme, which seems to be creating a backlog. There is a narrow window of opportunity here and I urge the Foreign Secretary to reinforce what the Prime Minister assured me from the Dispatch Box today, that sufficient resources are committed to ensure that no one is left behind who wishes to leave.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Of course we are grateful to the Government for making the commitment to welcoming new refugees to the UK, but does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that, alongside the UNHCR definition of what is required to be a refugee, the UK Government have introduced additional requirements, which will make the process far more complex and make it far more difficult to prove that these refugees are genuine?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baron]

I can assure the hon. Member that many, if not all, on the Government side, and no doubt on both sides, of the House will press the Government as best they can to ensure that our welcome of refugees is nothing short of very generous, given the circumstances of the case. We owe it to those people; we need to stand by them. Of course the usual terrorist screening and so on must take place, but I have got the message across, I have had a response from the Prime Minister, I know that the Foreign Secretary is a man of his word and I, as chair of the all-party group, have made this representation very strongly in the House today and fully expect that the Government will honour it. There are too many people trapped, at the moment, in the bureaucratic mess in Kabul airport, despite the wonderful work that our ambassador is doing there—in the airport—and we need to commit sufficient resources. I think I have made that point strongly enough, and if the hon. Lady does not mind, I shall quickly move on and make a couple of other points.

I would argue that this has proved to be yet another mistaken intervention, which will sit alongside Iraq, Libya and Syria. The fundamental error that we made here—it has been alluded to in one or two very good speeches—is that we allowed the initial, limited and very successful mission of expelling al-Qaeda in 2001 to morph into a much wider intervention of nation building, which meant fighting the Taliban. That was unnecessary, given that the 2001 intervention had proved that we could achieve our goals of combating terrorism through limited interventions.

As one of the few Conservative MPs at the time to oppose the wider intervention and to vote against it, I suggest that the mission was born of ignorance, was over-ambitious and, from the very start, was thoroughly under-resourced. If we are not prepared to put in the resource to see this through to the end, we should not be surprised at the sort of exit shambles that we have recently seen. The policy was defended by too many—for too long—who should have known better, whatever their purposes, including a few in this place. I pay honour to our service personnel. They did their job in buying time—it is up to the politicians to come up with the solutions—and they achieved their missions. They can be proud, and we can be proud of them.

While the priority now is to save lives, the scale of the error is such that, I believe, the many bereaved families and service personnel who are still paying the price of this intervention, including those of the eight fusiliers killed from my regiment, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and the 30 or so wounded from the regiment who are living with life-changing injuries, deserve an apology from the Prime Minister on behalf of previous Governments, even though the exit strategy was not of No. 10’s making. I think that that is the very least we can do. They can be proud, we can be proud of them, but I think that an apology is certainly due.