UK must welcome ‘tens of thousands of Afghan refugees’, urges Labour

The UK must welcome ‘tens of thousands of refugees’ from Afghanistan as the country descends into chaos, the Labour Party has urged.

Shadow Foreign Office minister Stephen Kinnock warned the intake ‘needs to be a bold and ambitious and generous offer’.

It comes as women and girls – whose rights are feared to be in severe peril under the new Taliban regime – will get special priority under any programme.

The Afghan resettlement project is expected to be similar to one that has allowed more than 20,300 Syrians to flee to this country over the last seven years.

Shadow Foreign Office minister Stephen Kinnock warned the intake needs to be a bold and ambitious and generous offer’

Women and girls, whose rights are feared to be in severe peril under the new Taliban regime, will get priority under the programme, it is understood. Pictured: Yesterday’s evacuation

Mr Kinnock told Today the new plan ‘needs to be a bold and ambitious and generous offer’.

Asked if 20,000 people would be about right, he said: ‘We need to see an offer that is also backed up with the capacity to process it.

‘As you pointed out, the situation on the ground there is so difficult at the moment that we have got to ensure that we don’t open up an offer that we can’t actually deliver on.

‘So we need to see the detail of the plan from the Government, but it is absolutely right that we make an ambitious and bold offer.’

Asked if that means tens of thousands of people rather than a few thousand, he said: ‘I would have thought so, yes, yes – we, of course, need to see the detail, but I think this needs to be a significant offer.’

Women and girls are expected to get special priority under any programme the government launches, it is understood.

‘It’s in everyone’s interest not to let Afghanistan fail,’ a Downing Street spokesman said last night.

‘That means providing whatever support we can to the Afghan people who have worked so hard to make the country a better place over the last 20 years and who are now in need of our help.’

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has led the Cobra emergency committee over the last four days, and is seeking to to host a virtual meeting of G7 leaders, including US President Joe Biden

British citizens and dual nationals residing in Afghanistan being relocated to the UK

He added: ‘We’ll be speaking to other world leaders about how we can take a unified approach.

‘I think it’s clear no one country has the capability to deal with this alone and we want to work together on that.’ 

Cabinet ministers including Dominic Raab and Priti Patel were last night finalising details of the scheme before handing them to Boris Johnson.

The PM yesterday led the Cobra emergency committee as it held its third meeting in four days.

He is seeking to host a virtual meeting of G7 leaders, including US President Joe Biden, as soon as possible.

He spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday and ministers are hoping for a meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in the coming days.

Mr Johnson will update Parliament tomorrow when MPs are recalled early from their summer break for the first time in eight years to debate the crisis.

A Downing Street spokesman said: ‘The UK team in Afghanistan is working around the clock in incredibly difficult circumstances to help British nationals and as many others as we can get to safety as soon as possible.’

Former Conservative immigration minister Damian Green called on the Government to take in any Afghan with a legitimate claim.

Former Conservative immigration minister Damian Green (pictured) called on the Government to take in any Afghan with a legitimate claim

He said: ‘There are times and places where we should be strict with asylum applications. Afghanistan today is the exact opposite. We should take anyone who can make a case.’

Chairman of the Commons defence committee Tobias Ellwood said the numbers accepted by Britain should run ‘at least’ into tens of thousands.

The former British Army captain told news website PoliticsHome: ‘All Nato countries who participated in Afghanistan need to work together to coordinate efforts in order to facilitate arrival of what will be hundreds of thousands of families fleeing the country.’

Former Cabinet minister Lord Hammond described the situation as a ‘terrible failure of Western strategy’ warning of not just a ‘humanitarian crisis but no doubt in time a counter-terrorism crisis for the West’.

The resettlement scheme will offer an escape route to thousands of people, but any upper limit on numbers was still being finalised last night.

Mr Raab said: ‘We are obviously a big-hearted nation, we’ve got the criteria for asylum, that’s set in law… We’re working very carefully on what kind of further commitment we might make.’

Last night British legal bodies called for female Afghan judges and lawyers to be given priority, amid concern over their safety under Taliban rule.

The Bar Council and the Law Society said in a joint statement they were ‘gravely concerned’ about the ‘perilous future’ they were facing under the Taliban.

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