Speeches by Pollard.

“That might be one for Dominic.”

“That is right. In opposition, as the shadow Armed Forces Minister with responsibility for Afghans, I had raised a number of concerns around data and the handling of the Afghan scheme, but I was not aware of the super-injunction until I became a Minister.”

“My message, very clearly, is that we will honour our obligation in full to eligible Afghans. This country, under both the previous Government and the current Government, has promised that we will honour that obligation. We have relocated 38,000 or so eligible Afghans to date, including key principal individuals and imm…”

“As I said, I will not be able to talk about individual judgments, but the Defence Secretary set it out in a statement to Parliament, when he talked about not the actions of individuals, but a system that was not delivering.”

“Yes, broadly. Since we made the decision around the pipeline, we have been able to close two hotels we were using for Afghan transitional accommodation: one in Scotland, and one in south Wales, which I believe closed only a few days ago. We have also been able to exit transitional accommodation from the Defence estate,…”

“The Rimmer review is by far one of the key elements, because we needed to understand the risk nature.”

“I suspect there was someone. That might be a question for Dominic. We would have to have kept a record of all those people who the super-injunction had been applied to, but that was not a long list that I was privy to—and nor was there a necessity for me to be.”

“When we took over and were made aware of the super-injunction, it was our sense that we needed to continue the spirit of the super-injunction due to the risk that, at the time, was applied to the individuals on the dataset. To be honest, it was pretty unpalatable for me as a parliamentarian, especially as someone who h…”

“My sense of this is, having inherited a situation where a number of parliamentarians were read on, that that work had already been done. Those people had already been read on. The legal application of the super-injunction had been applied to those individuals, and that was the current sense.”

“The spirit of the super-injunction was that, due to the risk involved, only those individuals necessary for the protective action should be told about it. I was uncomfortable with the super-injunction; I think we all were in the Department—there was no one who was comfortable with this situation—and that led us, in tim…”

“At the time, the new shadow Defence Secretary, James Cartlidge, was a read-on Minister from the previous Administration, so that effectively mirrored the arrangement under which John Healey had been read on in opposition.”

“During that period, I wrote to the Leader of the Opposition, inviting her to be read on. As you will recall from the time, it took a wee while to get a response to that, but we read her on ahead of the lifting of the super-injunction. And, just at the point of lifting the super-injunction, as part of a managed briefing…”

“I am not privy to the decisions that the last Government made as to who they chose to read in on this.”

“I was not shown a full list of the people in the compartment, but broadly there was an understanding that this was a tightly held restriction. It was not a departmental compartment, so to speak; it was one required by the courts in terms of the risk of it. We could not acknowledge either that it existed or the contents…”

“I am very happy to look into that.”

“Thank you for your opening remarks about the soldier we lost recently. That is much appreciated. It was immediately after becoming a Minister—I think it was 10 July 2024—when the super-injunction was disclosed to me, and I was read in on that injunction. In opposition, it was only the now Defence Secretary who was read…”

“It is not what he did, though, when he was in charge. Certainly, when we assumed office, having been briefed on the super-injunction and made aware of the other challenges affecting the ARAP scheme, our assessment in opposition was the one that I had immediately after coming into office: that it was a mess that needed …”

“I do not think I have—on taking office, I have had no correspondence that I can recall from Grant Shapps at all, and that is not one that I am aware of.”

“Yes, what I am saying is that the previous Government had read on the Speaker and the Lord Speaker. In the event that a debate happened in the House of Commons, I think the previous Government made the decision, which I think was reasonable at the time, that in order to support the spirit of the super-injunction, there…”

“As I set out previously, we have an ambition to look at how we address all the schemes, including where we are on what honouring the obligation fully means, but the Rimmer review was absolutely essential and vital. It was the main piece of evidence that we were able to use to assess whether there was an increased risk …”