17-07-2025
The Afghan fiasco shows how badly the last Tory government let you down
The lifting of the superinjunction this week has exposed gross failings committed by those trusted to keep us safe. The truth about how and why this happened must come out. It must never happen again.
There are some basic facts which the public needs to know and should have known from the start. Firstly, if a court issues an injunction relating to government business, Ministers are prohibited from speaking publicly about it for fear of being held in contempt of court.
Anyone who is claiming that those who have left Government, could or should have 'blown the whistle' before the injunction was lifted does not understand our legal or political system. Like the media, many of us have been unable to speak on this for a long time.
Secondly, and for context, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) was launched in April 2024 for those Afghan nationals affected by the leak. This was after I had left the Government and I was not involved in its set up or functioning. The ARR should not be confused with the Afghanistan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) which was set up in 2021 to rescue soldiers and translators who had served alongside our brave British soldiers that fought and died in Afghanistan.
Thirdly, the mistaken data leak came from inside the Ministry of Defence. There is much more that needs to be said about the conduct of and competence within the Ministry of Defence and the House of Commons is the right place to do so. I hope we have the opportunity soon.
Lastly, any plans to bring in 24,000 Afghan nationals are wholly wrong for our country. Many of these people will not be genuine in their claims to have helped British troops, many of them will pose a public safety and national security risk to the British people and we simply do not have the resources to accommodate them. What's worse is that all who have now arrived here will be able to bring their families under Article 2 of the ECHR.
As Home Secretary, I tried my best to fix the crisis but ultimately failed. 40,000 migrants had crossed the Channel by the end of 2023, over 100,000 asylum seekers were being processed through our slow-moving system and tens of thousands were being housed in hotels all over the country – all this costing the taxpayer £6 million per day. It was out of control and still is.
Whilst I managed to reduce the number of hotels used by asylum seekers, much more was required. What we needed to do – as I argued at the time – was to leave the ECHR so we had greater powers to detain and deport. If we had taken those steps in 2023 when we were in power, the Rwanda scheme would have been up and running and the small boats problem would have eased, if not been fixed entirely.
We would have had much less pressure on the system and the costs would have fallen. We would have been able to refuse admission to 24,000 Afghans affected by the leak as they would not have been able to rely on Article 2 (right to life) rights or we could have worked with other nations like Pakistan or Rwanda to take them.
In all this disgraceful betrayal of the people by their own government, I feel only shame. I, and a handful of others, fought this: but we failed to stop it. This is why on election night last year I apologised for what we had got wrong. This is why I warned about the direction we were heading in back in 2023.
The last Conservative government let you down. The cover-up was wrong, the super injunction was wrong, and the failure to stop unwanted mass immigration has been unforgivable. So I am sorry: the Conservative government failed you and its leaders let you down. It wasn't good enough then. It's not good enough now.
This episode exposes everything wrong with the Westminster establishment. The State apparatus thinks it can hide its failures behind legal technicalities while ordinary people pay the price. I understand your anger, and I share it.
The people who have run this country so badly need to take a long, hard look at themselves. Those responsible must be held accountable, and the system that enabled this cover-up has to be dismantled.
