Background
On 15 July 2025, a High Court judge lifted a super-injunction granted to the Ministry of Defence on 1 September 2023. The super-injunction related to the unauthorised release of a dataset of information on people who applied for resettlement in the UK from Afghanistan, on the grounds that they were at risk from the Taliban as a result of their work with or for the UK. It prevented the disclosure of any information on the data release and on the existence of the injunction itself. The Secretary of State for Defence then made a statement in Parliament describing the data release and government’s subsequent establishment of a resettlement scheme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR).
Separately, the government has been operating other schemes for relocating and resettling people from Afghanistan. In April 2021 it launched the Afghan Relations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) for Afghan citizens who worked for or with the UK government in Afghanistan. In January 2022 it opened the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) to resettle individuals from Afghanistan, prioritising those who assisted the UK efforts in Afghanistan and vulnerable people.
Scope
We will examine the Afghanistan resettlement schemes through two publications:
- We will factually set out government’s response to the data release, the establishment of the ARR and the associated costs, in an initial published briefing for Parliament planned for September 2025.
- We will then assess the government’s Afghanistan relocation programmes overall, in a separate report for Parliament to be published in early 2026. This will cover government’s planning and decision-making processes, resourcing, governance and accountability relating to these schemes.
NAO team
Directors: Helen Holden and Lee Summerfield
Audit Managers: Grace Williams and Tom Tyson