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Hundreds of Afghan special forces soldiers and their family members will be brought to safety in Britain after ministers admitted that new evidence has confirmed they were paid by the UK.
Armed forces minister Luke Pollard has told the Commons that a Ministry of Defence review, sparked by campaigning MPs and a joint investigation by The Independent, has found that members of Afghan specialist units were directly employed by the UK government, despite previous denials.
Thousands of these soldiers, who fought side-by-side with British troops, had been denied relocation to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap). Conservative ministers had told parliament that these soldiers, known as the Triples, were not directly employed by the UK.
However, Mr Pollard confirmed on Monday that this was wrong. Around 2,000 applications by members of Afghan specialist units, who had previously been rejected for help, are being reviewed.
25 per cent of these are expected to have their decisions overturned, Mr Pollard said. More than 75 per cent of the applications have been re-assessed so far.
Eligible Afghans and their families are now being invited to relocate to the UK, the minister said.
Mr Pollard told the Commons on Monday: “Officials have now confirmed that there is evidence of payments from the UK government to members of Afghan specialist units including CF333 and ATF444 [the Triples] and for some individuals this demonstrates a direct employment relationship. This is evidence that goes beyond previously identified top-up payments and reimbursements for operational expenses, which do not demonstrate such an employment relationship in themselves.
“This is of course contrary to the position reported to parliament by the previous governmment that no such evidence of direct employment existed.”
A joint investigation by The Independent, Lighthouse Reports, and Sky News found that dozens of Afghan commandos who were paid by and worked “hand in glove” with the British military had been tortured or killed by the Taliban since the fall of Kabul.
Mr Pollard said that the slow pace of the MoD’s review into these applications has been “a source of deep concern”. He assured MPs that “if a decision is overturned as part of this review, applicants are informed immediately”.
He added: “I have already begun to sign eligible decisions to relocate eligible Triples to the UK.”
Mr Pollard said that Conservative ministers’ incorrect statements to parliament about payments to these Afghans was not a “conscious effort to mislead”. Instead he said there had been a “failure to access and share the right digital records and challenges with information flows across departmental lines”.
He explained: “I am clear that this sort of systems failure is not good enough.”
The minister promised: “Eligible former triples and their families will now rightly receive the sanctuary that their work in support of our troops in Afghanistan deserves.
“I am confident that we be able to relocate those eligible to safety and to start a new life here in the UK. We will keep pushing forward this work at pace - knowing that we did right by those who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with armed forces in Afghanistan.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated...
