An old Commons speech has come back to confront Suella Braverman after she called two Afghan resettlement schemes “appalling policies” and “Great Betrayals.” Hansard shows her defending both while she was actually running the Home Office.
Braverman, Conservative home secretary from September 2022 to November 2023 before defecting to Reform this year, attacked the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy and the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme during the row over Zia Yusuf calling Ben Wallace a “traitor.” In a Commons debate on 5 June 2023, SNP MP Joanna Cherry challenged her over the lack of working legal routes for Afghans who believed Britain owed them a debt for their service. Braverman rejected the criticism outright: “I am very proud that a high number of Afghans have been resettled in and welcomed to the United Kingdom between 2015 and 2022. Almost 50,000 people have been resettled or relocated; more than 21,000 of them went through the Afghan schemes, the ACRS and ARAP, and more than 28,000 went through established resettlement schemes relating to other countries. I think that that is a good track record.”
Three years later, her description of those same policies has changed considerably.
From ‘very proud’ to ‘appalling’
This round started after Yusuf attacked Wallace over Afghan relocations, calling him a “traitor to Britain” and asking if he should face treason charges. Farage called that “over the top” and promised Yusuf a “ticking off.”
Braverman then joined in on Yusuf’s side. “ARAP was launched in 2021, before I was Home Secretary,” she wrote on X. “It was an appalling scheme that put huge pressure on the Home Office and yet another mistake by the last Tory government.” After Wallace criticised her intervention, she went further: “Your evangelism about bringing thousands of Afghans into the UK was an appalling misjudgment. It forced the Home Office to accommodate migrants who would otherwise not be here, it took up valuable housing stock that should have been used by Brits and has placed enormous pressure on our resources. Both ARAP AND ACRS were Great Betrayals by the last Conservative government, introduced before I was Home Secretary, and must never happen again.”
Both schemes did predate her becoming home secretary, that part’s true. It doesn’t change the fact she later ran the department responsible for them, publicly defended them in Parliament, and praised their results.
What ARAP and ACRS were actually for
The two schemes covered different groups. ARAP opened in April 2021 for Afghans who’d worked for or with the British government in exposed or meaningful roles, people facing danger specifically because they’d helped the UK during the war. ACRS formally opened in January 2022, covering vulnerable and at-risk people, including women, girls and minority groups, alongside some who’d supported British and international work in Afghanistan.
Both were separate from the later Afghanistan Response Route, set up after an MoD data breach, a distinction that’s been repeatedly lost in this current row. Official figures published in May show 38,617 people recorded under the combined Afghan Resettlement Programme by end of March 2026: 20,028 under ARAP, 4,468 through the Response Route, just over 14,000 across the three ACRS pathways. ARAP and ACRS both closed to new principal applications in July 2025, though existing cases are still being processed.
The old footage spread fast
The 2023 clip got shared widely under Braverman’s latest posts. A Community Note attached to one summarised the Commons record directly, noting she’d praised admitting over 21,000 people under ARAP and ACRS and called it a “good track record.”
@mjCurnow shared the note and let it speak for itself. @M60RNG was blunter: “You were in charge, you were in office, you made numerous statements in the House. It was all noted and recorded.” @ThomasEvansAdur: “You think people won’t forget. You think people are stupid.”
Braverman’s since switched parties, leaving the Conservatives for Reform in January, and has repeatedly denounced policies from the government she served in. Her current line is that ARAP and ACRS were mistakes conceived before she took over the Home Office. The actual record shows something different from simple inherited opposition. Once she was in charge of that department, she stood at the despatch box and said she was “very proud” of the people admitted through both schemes. Not an anonymous briefing, not a secondhand account. Braverman, as home secretary, on the parliamentary record.
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