With the UK Budget approaching, now is the time for the UK Government to provide a multi-year subsidy for the Post Office so that Subpostmasters and communities, such as Inverclyde, have certainty and stability.

Closing Post Office branches can severely harm local communities, given many local businesses and the most vulnerable rely on it for access to cash and other services.

It’s important that the UK Government acts to create a healthy environment for the Post Office network so it can continue to provide a valuable contribution to our society.  This means providing the necessary funding and that Post Office Ltd agree to guarantee a minimum income for every Subpostmaster so their hard work pays off and running a Post Office becomes an attractive opportunity once again.

The UK already has the lowest state pension – as a proportion of pre-retirement wages – of all of our European neighbours. House of Commons Library research revealed that UK pensioners receive around a quarter (28%) of the average working wage when they retire. In stark contrast, pensioners in Luxembourg and Austria receive 90% of the average working wage.

By scrapping the triple lock on pensions, this UK Government has broken yet another manifesto commitment.  This follows on the WASPI campaigners continuing their fighting for pension justice and also pensioners in Inverclyde fighting against the changes to TV licence fees for over 70s.

A decade of Tory austerity cuts, coupled with one of the worst state pensions in the developed world, means that millions of our older people are already living in poverty. Scrapping the triple lock is another hammer blow for Inverclyde pensioners from the UK government.

In December 2020, the Home Office and Ministry of Defence (MOD) announced the ARAP, which is designed to assist current or former locally employed staff in Afghanistan receive assistance or be offered relocation.

The scheme was launched on 1 April 2021 and replaces the previous Intimidation Policy that has operated since 2010. The ARAP will operate indefinitely. Both current or former locally employed staff employed by the UK Government assessed to be at serious risk of threat to life are eligible to apply, regardless of their length of service or employment status.

The Home Office have published an ARAP scheme factsheet on its operation, use of security checks and reasons for rejection.

Application is via an online form: Relocation to the United Kingdom Application (office.com). Applications can be made to the scheme from any country, including Afghanistan.

Advice can also be sought via the following email: localstaff-afghanistan@mod.gov.uk

Applications are processed and determined by the Afghan Threat and Risk Evaluations Unit, which is made up of officials from the MOD and FCDO. Responsibility for assessing the application (PDF) rests with the Department that employed the applicant.

Applicants who qualify for relocation may include a partner and any minor dependent children in their application. The details of which family members qualify, are set out in Home Office Additional Guidance on the eligibility of additional family members, June 2021 (PDF). In September 2021, the Government announced that those who are relocated to the UK under the ARAP will receive immediate indefinite leave to remain. Those who have already been relocated can apply free of charge to convert their temporary leave into indefinite leave.

The Commons Library Briefing on the Resettlement scheme for locally employed civilians in Afghanistan provides more detail on scheme.

The seeds of failure that have produced the outcomes we are seeing today, go back twenty years and are partially caused by the main protagonists, UK and USA, having different objectives from day one. While the UK was driven by Tony Blair’s doctrine of liberal intervention, continuing the practice of the UK being the world’s police force, he also saw an opportunity to destroy the poppy fields that produce 90% of the heroin that comes into the UK. These goals were miles apart from the USA who were primarily driven by retribution for the 9/11 attacks. For twenty years we have seen military operations in Afghanistan that have resulted in many service personnel being seriously injured and many have lost their lives. But it should be noted that Afghanistan has been a political failure rather than a military one. We were never prepared to commit to a campaign that would require to take decades if it was to be successful, as that was politically not acceptable. And as has become obvious in the last few months, we never designed an exit strategy that would guarantee the safety of those left behind. As a result the similarities between Afghanistan today and Vietnam in 1975 are striking.

The withdrawal of military support by western allies to the Government of Afghanistan, and the subsequent seizure of power by the Taliban, has exacerbated the refugee crisis in the region, which has seen significant numbers of people displaced, with more certain to flee in the short and medium-term. Reports coming out of the country describe wide-scale atrocities, including attacks on women, torture, and forced marriage. The UK should be fulfilling its humanitarian responsibilities by offering protection to those fleeing the Taliban. Instead, we now have a UK government dithering over what action should be taken. While Pakistan and Iran have taken 90% of the refugees, the UK has been turning them away. We have been slow to engage with the re-settlement schemes and we have neglected those eligible for the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme. Since April, ARAP has been in place to move Afghan staff to the UK who worked locally for the UK Government (known informally as the Afghan interpreters’ scheme). This group are in particular danger, but access to this scheme is limited, and has left many people who have supported the UK Government ineligible. The terms of this scheme must be urgently reviewed to ensure those who need it are able to access it.

The UK has a duty of responsibility that it can’t be allowed to walk away from. Many people fleeing Afghanistan, and those who have been in danger after the takeover by the Taliban, have relatives who are already refugees in the UK, but are unable to join them because of restrictive rules around refugee family reunion. The Home Office should change these rules to expand refugee family reunion, and ensure that people are able to join loved ones in the UK via this safe and legal route.  Up to now the behaviour of the Home Office has been shameful and their mix of incompetence and lack of compassion will result in more casualties of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

Ronnie Cowan MP

My thanks to the Refugee Council and the United Nations HCR for engaging with me on this subject. Their input is invaluable.

Having read Dame Carol Black’s ‘Review of drugs part two’ several times now and having listened to her present and answer questions on the report, I find myself increasingly frustrated. Not at Dame Carol Black but within myself. The inadequacies of the existing system are laid bare for all to see within the report. Crucial areas that must be addressed are explained and thirty-two recommendations are detailed. Drug treatment and recovery support, funding, commissioning, diversion, employment, housing, mental and physical health, prevention, intervention and research, this report has recommendations for them all. And it is right and proper that we tackle drug policy in this way. Patching won’t do, we need reforms on a grand scale and in the hands of the people best placed to make them effective. For too long it has been designated as a matter for the judicial system and our health services have been left to pick up the pieces. This report puts health care at the heart of the solution and should be commended for doing so.      

But apart from making recommendations there is nothing else the report or I can do and that is the frustration. Dame Carol Black has been absolutely clear that if the UK Government starts picking and choosing which of her thirty-two recommendations to implement then it won’t work, and I applaud her for saying that. Too often we make do and mend with policies that need ripped up and rewritten. And the Misuse of Drugs act 1971 is a case in point. For fifty years it has made the situation worse.  But to expect the UK Government to have a sudden blinding flash of understanding and compassion is naïve. They won’t implement many of the recommendations, they will pick a few, dress up a few others, pay lip service to some and ignore the rest. And I say that with confidence and a heavy heart.

Confidence, because the UK Government just don’t get the issue of drug addiction or harm. And while the administration of it is held within the Home Office that shall continue to be the case. And a heavy heart because as people within the drug rehabilitation community keep telling me, ‘you keep on talking and we keep on dying’.

This is not Dame Carol Black’s fault. Her remit was deliberately precise. She was not allowed to recommend any new legislation. Which effectively neuters her report. How can she be expected to identify improvements in a system which is tied up and gagged by the law if she can’t suggest changes to the law? But Dame Carol Black has a good go at that by recommending a new structure for the mechanics of government, which if it was allowed to function could within itself produce the required legislation. And I am sure Dame Carol Black would be very happy with that outcome. She feeds in all the good ideas and the UK Government put them through a mincer and come up with the solutions she proposed, implements them and take the credit. To be honest I would be more than happy if that happened. But I just can’t see it because one recommendation is the creation of a new central Drugs Unit. This unit will be placed “in whatever department or joint arrangement seems appropriate”.  Unless that department is the Department for Health and Social Care then it is in my opinion a nonstarter. The intransigence of the Home Office has been a feature of this UK Government and I can’t see that changing any day now. I expect warm words for Dame Carol Black’s report, which could be seen as progress, but I don’t expect the UK Government will do anything other than launch enquiries, form committees,  divert the responsibility and talk about budgets and constraints. The UK Home Office is where good ideas go to die.        

At the start of her report Dame Carol Black says the UK ‘Government faces an unavoidable choice: invest in tackling the problem or keep paying for the consequences. A whole-system approach is needed’.  And she is absolutely correct. So, go on Kit Malthouse, agree to all thirty two recommendations, fund them and put the power of implementation into the appropriate departments and prove me one hundred percent wrong, please.   

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19475791.drugs-deaths-uks-pick-and-mix-approach-will-lead-loss-life/