Wallace rejects claim Afghans with ‘tenuous’ links to UK admitted as ex-Tory minister says resettlement scheme was ‘hapless’ – live | Politics

In his interview on the Today programme, Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, was asked about Johnny Mercer’s claim that the UK ended up admitting people with only “tenuous” links to Britain through its Afghan resettlement schemes. (See 8.09am.) Wallace said: “I don’t think he’s entirely right.”

He explained:

Now, in the Ministry of Defence, and I remember this at the time, originally, it was assessed there’d be about 12,000 people going spanning the 20 years, plus their families who had been leaked to working directly for the British state.

The policy was, we didn’t want the whole Afghan army to come. We wanted – because we’d…