I TRAVELLED down to Westminster for the recall of Parliament this week hoping to speak in the debate on the situation in Afghanistan. Alas, I wasn’t allowed the opportunity and neither were most of the SNP MPs who had asked to speak.
I’m still glad I went. The level of the tragedy in Afghanistan and the level of concern of my constituents is such that it was my duty to be there to try to articulate our concerns for the Afghan people, particularly women, abandoned to a terrible fate by the insouciance of the Johnson administration and President Biden’s weakness.
Had I got to speak, I would have focused on the humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes. I would have said we need to help the living, but we must not forget the dead – 71,000 Afghan civilians, 69,000 Afghan soldiers and 457 British servicemen and women killed with many more on all sides with serious and life-changing physical and mental injuries.
READ MORE: Caitlin Logan: Women and girls condemned once again to a nightmare in Afghanistan
Our servicemen and women risked their lives to make things better for the people of Afghanistan, not worse. I do not presume to speak for them, but I can tell you what one veteran, my constituent John Robertson, who served in Helmand province, told me: “I feared for my own life and that of my brother comrades, but now my biggest fear is for the safety of the civilian population within the whole country. We know the history behind the barbaric Taliban and my fear now is for every woman and child ...”
We owe it to the sacrifice of those who died and their memory to continue to help the people they died to protect. This has been a political failure by a government asleep on the job and it needs a political solution. The UK Government must make amends but, in order to do so, it must go against the grain of its anti-immigration ideology. In the circumstances that is the least it can do.
The proposal to take 5000 refugees now and another 15,000 over a period of years is wholly inadequate. We need to help way more people than that and to do so we need a full suite of measures at home and abroad.
People need help right now; they cannot afford to wait years. The UK should be taking at least 20,000 refugees now with an annual commitment to take more thereafter – the Refugee Council suggests 10,000 a year. We need to take these refugees directly from Afghanistan not just from surrounding countries.
Many are trapped there and won’t make it out. Refugees International is right to call for a humanitarian corridor. But why didn’t the British government make contingency plans for this before the terrible scenes at Kabul airport transpired?
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which facilitates refugee resettlement, was not even aware of the new British scheme until it was announced. This does not augur well. Even more concerningly, the British government appears to want to reframe and qualify the UNHCR definition of what is required to be a refugee, rather than sticking with the formula tried and tested by the experts on the ground.
READ MORE: Lesley Riddoch: Is the Tories' claim 'no-one saw Afghan crisis coming' true?
We must issue visas on a wider scale to the women the UK encouraged to take part in civic society and who are now left horribly exposed. This includes teachers who taught female students, those students, politicians, journalists, judges and all those whose lives are now at risk from misogynistic fundamentalists. Separately, the relocation and assistance scheme for Afghans who helped the British military should be reviewed and expanded urgently. It’s time to stop overlooking third-party contractors, interpreters’ family members, second order workers such as cooks and cleaners, and former interpreters sacked from jobs without the chance to appeal.
BACK home, refugees who make it to the UK using the so called “irregular” routes, such as crossing the Channel, should not be criminalised and locked up as planned Tory changes in the Nationality and Borders Bill, currently going through Parliament, will demand.
All removal flights to Afghanistan must be suspended. The rules on refugee family union must be reviewed and expanded so family members can join Afghanis already safe in the UK. Asylum claims for those already in the UK should be decided on the basis of the current situation and appeals reviewed on that basis.
Finally, our budget for aid must be fully restored, not just for Afghanistan but for the surrounding countries and countries of first reception in Europe.
It is simply not fair to expect countries such as Greece to bear the humanitarian toll of the west’s mistakes. President Macron is badly wrong about this. Greece is still feeling the effects of austerity and struggling with the consequences of climate change. The Greeks cannot be left to deal with another influx of refugees.
Scotland stands ready to do our fair share and more. Contrary to what some ludicrous Tory backbencher claimed in the Commons on Wednesday, Scotland took twice as many Syrian refugees under the Vulnerable Refugee Resettlement Scheme as the UK average. All 32 Scottish local authorities took part. Many of the refugees who came, like the owners of Levant Sweets in Dalry in my Edinburgh South West constituency, now make a valuable contribution to their community.
READ MORE: Tory MP's claim that 'UK took most Syrian refugees' contradicted by UN data
On BBC Radio Scotland this week, Simon Diggins, a retired army colonel and member of the Sulah Alliance which helps interpreters attempting to leave Afghanistan safely, said Scotland has been “extraordinarily generous” in looking after refugees.
In relation to Afghan interpreters, he reminded us that the Scottish Government stepped in and allowed them to go to university on Scottish student terms, an offer not matched by the UK Government so far.
It’s time for the UK Government to take a leaf out of Scotland’s book. We need actions to match the platitudes mouthed by the PM and his pathetic sidekick the Foreign Secretary in the Commons debate. Nothing short of the sort of ambitious package I have outlined above will do.
The British government’s foreign policy has failed. It’s time for its humanitarian policy to succeed and in doing so to make amends for a shocking dereliction of duty and breach of trust.
One final thought. I am not an abstentionist. Neither I nor my SNP MP colleagues were elected on an abstentionist platform. Most of our constituents expect us to attend Westminster on their behalf. But that does not mean we could not do with a reset of our strategy and approach there.
On Wednesday, very few SNP speakers were taken, and, in a particular odious “point of order” one Labour backbencher seemed to think we should not even get to make interventions.
My friend and colleague Carol Monaghan remarked to me that often the SNP behave in Westminster with a respect for the process which is not matched by the respect accorded to us.
She is right. Sure, we are the third party but sometimes it feels like we are there on sufferance.
We no longer hold the sway we did in the hung “Brexit parliament”. It’s time to rethink how we approach things.
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