Wallace rejects claim Afghans with ‘tenuous’ links to UK admitted as ex-Tory minister says resettlement scheme was ‘hapless’ – live | Politics
Published: 2025-07-16 10:00:58 | Views: 7
Ben Wallace rejects claim by former minister Afghans with only 'tenuous' links to UK admitted under resettlement schemes
In his interview on the Today programme, Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, was asked about Johnny Mercer’s claim that the UK ended up admitting people with only “tenuous” links to Britain through its Afghan resettlement schemes. (See 8.09am.) Wallace said: “I don’t think he’s entirely right.”
He explained:
Now, in the Ministry of Defence, and I remember this at the time, originally, it was assessed there’d be about 12,000 people going spanning the 20 years, plus their families who had been leaked to working directly for the British state.
The policy was, we didn’t want the whole Afghan army to come. We wanted – because we’d invested billions of dollars, as had the allies, in them, trying to protect their state.
These were people directly linked to our different parts of our military and they were 12,000. The total number seems to be 18,000. I believe they were the right people.
Key events
Davey calls for switch to CfD price mechanism for green energy, to stop renewable bills being tied to price of gas
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is today proposing all all green energy projects be moved to a government subsidy scheme, in a speech accusing Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch of peddling “myths” about net zero.
As PA Media reports, Davey will call for a “rapid” transition to Contracts for Difference (CfD), which work by guaranteeing generators a fixed “strike price” for electricity regardless of the wholesale price, in a speech to the IPPR this afternoon. PA says:
CfDs are awarded by government auction to firms bidding to produce renewable energy for the UK grid, with developers either paid a subsidy up to the strike price or repaying the surplus while the market price fluctuates.
Davey will say that only 15% of green power is produced under such contracts, with the rest still coming from an old legacy scheme.
The 2002 Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROC) scheme, which does not involve a strike price guarantee, closed to new generation in 2017 but still governs some projects on contracts due to expire by 2037.
Davey will argue that the ROC scheme was introduced “when ministers didn’t have the foresight to realise that renewable power would get so much cheaper over the next two decades”.
He will call on ministers to move all legacy agreements on to CfD, saying the transition would slash household energy bills by “breaking the link” between gas prices and electricity costs.
The party leader is expected to say: “People are currently paying too much for renewable energy. But not for the reasons Nigel Farage would have you believe.
“Because generating electricity from solar or wind is now significantly cheaper than gas – even when you factor in extra system costs for back-up power when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
“But people aren’t seeing the benefit of cheap renewable power, because wholesale electricity prices are still tied to the price of gas.
“Unlike Contracts for Difference, companies with ROCs get paid the wholesale price – in other words, the price of gas – with a subsidy on top. Subsidies paid through levies on our energy bills – costing a typical household around £90 a year.”
Davey will describe the legacy system as “manifestly unfair” for consumers and call on the government to “start today a rapid process of moving all those old ROC renewable projects on to new Contracts for Difference”.
Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, is giving evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee this morning.
There is a live feed here.
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall questioned by parliamentary committee – watch live
Healey says he opposes 'witch hunt' against accidental Afghan data leaker, as Badenoch suggests he should have been sacked
Kemi Badenoch has suggested that the individual responsible for the Afghan data leak should have been sacked.
Speaking on LBC last night, she said:
The first thing that came to mind [when she heard about the data leak] is that this is what people are angry about, that if you had been working in a job in the private sector and something like that had happened, you’d be out on your ear.
And it just reminded me of one of the frustrations I had as a minister, that because you couldn’t sack civil servants, they kind of knew that they could do whatever they liked. At worse, they’d be moved to another department.
Yesterday, in an interview with the News Agents podcast, John Healey, the defence secretary, said the individual responsible was “no longer doing the same job on the Afghan brief”.
Asked about this on Sky News this morning, Healey said that the problems did not just relate to one individual and that he would not be launching a witch hunt. He said:
As far as the individual goes, I am not going to launch a witch hunt or point the finger at him.
When it was put to him that expecting someone to be disciplined was not a witch hunt, he replied:
I am sorry, those were decisions that would have been taken at the time. This goes much bigger than the mistaken actions of a single individual.
Afghans named in leaked list don't have automatic right to resettlement in UK, Healey says
John Healey told Sky News that the Afghans named in the spreadsheet that was accidentally leaked listing people who had applied for resettlement in the UK were not automatically eligible to come to this country.
The defence secretary said:
Most of those names on the list were people who didn’t work alongside our forces, didn’t serve with our forces, aren’t eligible for the special scheme that Britain put in place quite rightly to recognise that duty we owe those brave Afghans who supported our forces.
Now they’re not eligible for that. Their name is on the dataset, and there was never the plan, never the plan, to bring everyone in on that dataset into this country, and nor should we.
Asked if the risk posed by the leak could give them a right to claim asylum, he replied:
It doesn’t give them a right to claim access to Britain. It doesn’t give them a right to claim asylum. It doesn’t make them eligible for the special scheme that Britain put in place for those who’d worked alongside or served with our forces.
Healey defends not immediately lifting Afghan data leak superinjunction when Labour took office
John Healey, the defence secretary, has defended his decision not to immediately lift the superinjunction banning reporting of the Afghan data leak when Labour came into office.
Asked why he initially let it remain in place, he told Sky News:
Because we came into government a year ago and we had to sort out a situation which we’d not had access to dealing with before.
So that meant getting on top of the risks, the intelligence assessments, the policy complexities, the court papers and the range of Afghan relocation schemes the previous government had put in place.
And it also meant taking decisions that no one takes lightly because lives may be at stake.
And in the end, we were able to do this because I commissioned an independent review, which I published yesterday as well from Paul Rimmer that took a fresh look at the circumstances in Afghanistan now, four years on from the Taliban taking control, and the important thing it said was that it is highly unlikely that being a name on this dataset that was lost three-and-a-half years ago increases the risk of being targeted.
Ben Wallace rejects claim by former minister Afghans with only 'tenuous' links to UK admitted under resettlement schemes
In his interview on the Today programme, Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, was asked about Johnny Mercer’s claim that the UK ended up admitting people with only “tenuous” links to Britain through its Afghan resettlement schemes. (See 8.09am.) Wallace said: “I don’t think he’s entirely right.”
He explained:
Now, in the Ministry of Defence, and I remember this at the time, originally, it was assessed there’d be about 12,000 people going spanning the 20 years, plus their families who had been leaked to working directly for the British state.
The policy was, we didn’t want the whole Afghan army to come. We wanted – because we’d invested billions of dollars, as had the allies, in them, trying to protect their state.
These were people directly linked to our different parts of our military and they were 12,000. The total number seems to be 18,000. I believe they were the right people.
UK inflation rises unexpectedly to 3.6% driven by food and fuel prices
UK inflation unexpectedly rose in June driven by fuel and food prices, Richard Partington reports. The Office for National Statistics said the consumer prices index rose by 3.6% last month, up from a reading of 3.4% in May. City economists had forecast an unchanged reading.
Former Tory minister says Afghan resettlement scheme was ‘most hapless display of ineptitude’ he saw in government
Good morning. Normally when ministers make announcements in the House of Commons, we know at least some of the detail already because they been well trailed in advance. Yesterday was a rare example of a ministerial statement being used to reveal something utterly surprising and genuinely new (at least to anyone who had not seen the stories that dropped just 30 minutes earlier, when reporting restrictions were lifted). And this was a story about the murky workings of the Deep State. Here is our overnight story, by Dan Sabbagh and Emine Sinmaz.
Today attention is focusing on who is to blame. And two former Tory ministers are having their say in rival articles in the Daily Telegraph.
Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary when the leak happened, has used his article to defend going to court to stop the inadvertent release of names being reported. He said:
I make no apology for applying to the court for an injunction at the time. It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover up.
I took the view that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would put in peril those we needed to help out.
Some may disagree but imagine if the Taliban had been alerted to the existence of this list. I would dread to think what would have happened.
Wallace has also been on the Today programme this morning, and he insisted he was not to blame for the injunction being a superinjunction. He said:
When we applied in August 2023, when I was secretary of state, we didn’t apply for superinjunction. We applied for a four-month injunction, a normal injunction.
Wallace said it was the court that converted this into a superinjunction (meaning not just that the leak could not be reported, but the very existence of an injunction gagging the media could also not be reported). Wallace claimed he did not know why.
In his article Wallace largely defends the decisions taken by the previous government, but Johnny Mercer, who was veterans ministers in the same government (but not in the MoD – he worked out of the Cabinet Office), is very critical of the way the whole Afghan resettlement programme was handled. In his Telegraph article he said:
Whilst there will no doubt be a rush to blame the individual who sent it (I know who he is), it would be entirely unfair and wrong to do so. Because I can honestly say this whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government, of which this poor individual was just the end of the line …
The MoD has tried at every turn to cut off those from Afghan special forces units from coming to the UK, for reasons I cannot fathom.
They also lied to themselves about doing it. The UK’s director of Special Forces told me personally that he was offended and angry by my suggestion that his organisation was blocking the Triples.
Certain MoD ministers had a criminal lack of professional curiosity as to why the Triples [members of the Afghan special forces] were being rejected when there were so many subject matter experts who said they clearly should be eligible.
They even tried for a long time to say that Afghan special forces were not eligible.
Mercer said the UK ended up letting the wrong people in.
And the net result of this spectacular cluster is that we’ve let into this country thousands with little or tenuous links to the UK, and still some Afghan special forces we set up the bloody schemes for, remain trapped in Afghanistan, Pakistan or worse, Iran.
I feel furious, sad and bitter about the whole thing, and do as much as I can to get through each day not thinking about Afghanistan.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Liz Kendall, work and pensions secretary, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee.
10am: David Lammy, foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons international development committee.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Noon: The Home Office is publishing a report by David Anderson KC into the Prevent programme.
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