I checked Afghan papers. The MoD must come clean on vetting
Robert Clark, a former soldier and reservist who worked on the public Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) relocation scheme, said he had been told by people within the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that there had not been full vetting of applicants who had been secretly brought to the UK.
He said there would be national security questions for the intelligence services and police if there had not been the necessary checks to establish whether individuals had been radicalised or had terrorist connections.
According to the Government, some 6,900 Afghans and their families were identified as eligible for the secret scheme after their details were leaked, putting them at risk of being killed by the Taliban. Around half have so far come to the UK, according to officials.
However, the vetting claims have been disputed by ministers and Government officials. They said Afghans who came under the secret relocation scheme were subject to the same security checks as those who came through either of the two other public schemes run by the MoD and Home Office.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, told Times Radio: 'Anyone who has come into this country under any of the Government schemes that was under the previous government, and now from Afghanistan, is checked carefully for security, checked carefully for any of those sort of criminal records that would preclude and prevent them coming to this country.'
He challenged Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, to provide evidence to support his claims that 'convicted sex offenders' were among those airlifted to the UK after the data leak. 'We run security checks about the backgrounds of those individuals and where they pose those sorts of threats, they're prevented from coming and denied access to Britain,' said Mr Healey.
However, the Defence Secretary added: 'No doubt some of them have committed some offences and got into trouble [since arriving in the UK]. That's true right across the board.'
"No doubt some of them have committed some offences and got into trouble." @JohnHealey_MP tells #TimesRadio Afghans coming under government schemes were checked carefully but he "can't account" for individuals being responsible for criminal behaviour since they have arrived. pic.twitter.com/4qNGi04F5i
— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) July 16, 2025
Under the vetting process, any Afghans seeking refuge in the UK on the relocation schemes should be screened for serious and organised crime, as well as for any evidence of terrorist or extremist links.
Afghans whose safety was put at risk by the leak were invited to apply for relocation to the UK under the secret scheme, and came via Islamabad, where security vetting was undertaken.
Mr Clark, an Afghan war veteran who was a caseworker on the Arap scheme from September 2024 to February this year, said he did not know of any vetting failures related to it. The only exceptions were half a dozen young Afghan men under police investigation for sexual assaults or harassment after their arrival.
However, he said he believed it was different for those who had come under the secret relocation scheme and were deemed to be at high risk.
Mr Clark added: 'The only reason why they've come is because their details were leaked, i.e. they hadn't passed vetting. I'm also told they wouldn't have been eligible for whatever reason, whether it was vetting or tenuous links to the settlement scene itself.
'But they didn't get to that stage. They were just brought across precisely because, only because, their details were leaked. So it was a sense that we owe them a moral obligation, a duty of care.'
Earlier, Mr Clark told Times Radio: '[That's] 6,900 people who wouldn't have been eligible here otherwise, except for the fact that personal details were leaked. And like I say, this is going to cause quite a headache for the security services, I'm afraid.'
He said that criminal checks on Afghans were never 100 per cent guaranteed because many laws in the country were different. For example, sexual assault within marriage was not necessarily an offence.
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