Johnny Mercer, former veterans minister, sharply critical of how Afghan resettlement programme handled
Good morning. Normally when ministers make announcements in the House of Commons, we know at least some of the detail already because they been well trailed in advance. Yesterday was a rare example of a ministerial statement being used to reveal something utterly surprising and genuinely new (at least to anyone who had not seen the stories that dropped just 30 minutes earlier, when reporting restrictions were lifted). And this was a story about the murky operation of the Deep State. Here is our overnight story, by Dan Sabbagh and Emine Sinmaz.
Today attention is focusing on who is to blame. And two former Tory ministers are having their say in rival articles in the Daily Telegraph.
I make no apology for applying to the court for an injunction at the time. It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover up.
I took the view that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would put in peril those we needed to help out.
When we applied in August 2023, when I was secretary of state, we didn’t apply for superinjunction. We applied for a four-month injunction, a normal injunction.
Whilst there will no doubt be a rush to blame the individual who sent it (I know who he is), it would be entirely unfair and wrong to do so. Because I can honestly say this whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government, of which this poor individual was just the end of the line …
The MoD has tried at every turn to cut off those from Afghan special forces units from coming to the UK, for reasons I cannot fathom.
And the net result of this spectacular cluster is that we’ve let into this country thousands with little or tenuous links to the UK, and still some Afghan special forces we set up the bloody schemes for, remain trapped in Afghanistan, Pakistan or worse, Iran.
I feel furious, sad and bitter about the whole thing, and do as much as I can to get through each day not thinking about Afghanistan.
