CONSERVATIVE
New Forest East

HOME AFFAIRS – AFGHAN REFUGEES IN PAKISTAN - 01 March 2022

HOME AFFAIRS – AFGHAN REFUGEES IN PAKISTAN - 01 March 2022

Dr Julian Lewis: These welcome efforts will put huge extra strain on the Home Secretary’s Department. May I urge her to bear in mind the situation of those other refugees who fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and who have been granted entry visas to this country but are stuck there because they entered Pakistan undocumented in an emergency? The Pakistani authorities could well grab them and send them back to a terrible fate in Kabul. Will she reach out to the Ministry of Defence to set in place safe extraction measures for those people who we have agreed can come here, but who cannot show themselves in Pakistan because our so-called ally is too close to the Taliban?

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel): I thank my right hon. Friend for that important point. The Afghanistan resettlement and the plight of Afghan refugees absolutely has not ended. As Members of the House will know, we welcomed more than 20,000 Afghan refugees, and the Minister for Afghan Resettlement, who is sitting on the Bench beside me now, is in constant contact with the MOD, and particularly with our Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office partners in Pakistan. There absolutely are challenges, and we cannot just move from one international crisis to another. We must continue to work on this issue, and that is a whole-Government effort. We are using the FCDO and the MOD to deal specifically with those cases.]