Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will establish a statutory timeframe for communicating decisions on applications submitted under the (a) Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy and (b) Afghan Family Members policy.

Every application submitted under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme is considered on a case-by-case basis taking into account the evidence available. Whilst every effort is made to process applications as quickly as possible, some complex cases can take longer to process so that the appropriate decision is reached in each case. Due to this individual approach, a statutory timeframe would not be suitable.

I am paying close attention to this issue and have asked officials to make every effort to ensure decision-making is accelerated wherever possible, in particular for cases that have been awaiting an answer for some time.

This approach remains unchanged following the announcement of the Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP), which draws Afghan resettlement into a single delivery pipeline whilst retaining the current eligibility criteria of individual schemes such as ARAP.

We inherited a considerable backlog in applications to process as the new Government and I am aware that people have been waiting longer than I would want for an outcome of an application. Therefore, I have directed officials to ensure that this backlog is cleared at pace whilst ensuring every case is processed correctly.