Nesrine Malik’s excellent article (For Afghan refugees Britain’s warm welcome will soon become cold comfort, 6 September) highlights many of the issues facing Afghan refugees. Unfortunately, once asylum status has been granted, the second layer of bureaucracy awaits them. Unless they can find immediate employment, which pays enough to support themselves and their family without the need for state support, those granted leave to remain will enter the benefits system administered by the Department for Work and Pensions.
The benefits system caps assistance offered with both housing costs and support for children – no universal credit payable for a third or subsequent child born after April 2017.
The “welfare reforms” under David Cameron’s premiership, alongside the looming rows over both the withdrawal of the additional Covid-19 benefit support and changes to the pension triple lock, have created a perfect storm that those granted asylum will find themselves caught up in.
On the one hand, to extend funding and support for refugees, while universal credit is reduced by the sum of £20 per week and the triple lock is broken up, has the potential to create a racist backlash among those who will lose out or hold pejorative views on asylum seekers.
But on the other, to do nothing will simply leave many thousands of people in deep poverty, and the key issue highlighted in the article – treating trauma to assist integration – will not be properly addressed, which in turn will create yet more demand on services.
Mark Newbury
Farndale, North Yorkshire
• The catastrophe that is taking place in Afghanistan has exposed just how easily, and quickly, a once well-respected nation can lose its self-respect, its dignity and its position in the world. Your article (Yesterday’s war: why Raab did not foresee Afghanistan catastrophe, 3 September) reports that Dominic Raab said that he and the UK ambassador to the US, Dame Karen Pierce, had concluded from the presidential electoral campaign rhetoric that the August troop withdrawal timetable was “baked in ”.
The presidential campaign had kicked off by the summer of 2020 and the election took place in November 2020. Based on this timetable and his discussions with Pierce, wouldn’t it be fair to assume that, if not already under way, the necessary detailed planning and cooperation between the defence and Foreign Office departments to prepare for timely civilian and military repatriation operations was given a high priority?
Clearly, this did not happen, so now we are witness to a disgusting and gut-wrenching, finger-pointing and name-calling charade between the two departments. So one must ask, where was Boris Johnson, or for that matter the home secretary? What was their contribution to the planning meetings and discussions? He’s dodging bullets again, while Priti Patel appears to be doing everything she can to minimise the numbers of Afghan allies, comrades and civilian employees from entering our country as quickly and humanely as possible.
Add Afghanistan to the management of the Covid crisis, Brexit, the “special relationship” and our diminishing influence in Nato and explain, if you can, what has to happen before Britain wakes up to this Tory government’s abject incompetence and replaces them.
David Beswick
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
• You are of course right to criticise Dominic Raab for his lamentable performance as our absent foreign secretary (Editorial, 1 September), but it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Raab is the symptom, not the cause of our performance in foreign affairs. The fact is that we are now a minor nation, a small island off the coast of Europe with zero influence with anyone: the US, the EU, China and Russia, particularly since Brexit removed any vestige of our ability to contribute to European initiatives. The vacuous phrase “global Britain” is shown up for what it is, an empty boast relying on a history that is long gone but sadly not forgotten.
Dr Richard Carter
Putney, London
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