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James Heappey MP on Afghanistan situation

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James Heappey MP on Afghanistan situation

Minister of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey MP appeared on Good Morning Britain today and said he couldn’t sleep at night thinking about the rescue mission of getting thousands of UK citizens out of Afghanistan.

Speaking to Susanna Reid and Richard Bacon, he revealed:

“The sad reality is, you’ve heard our Secretary of State earlier in the week, we won’t get absolutely everybody out, but people across Whitehall, at the permanent joint headquarters in Northwood and in Kabul are doing everything humanly possible to bring people out in the best speed possible and so far the process is accelerating in the way we hope.”

“We are calling people forward in the biggest volumes that we can manage and getting them onto the first available planes that come. It keeps me awake at night, it keeps the Secretary of State awake at night, it keeps absolutely everybody here at the Ministry of Defence awake at night, that reality we won’t get absolutely everybody out but what is in our gift, through the extraordinary professionalism of our armed forces, we can get as many people out as possible and the more efficient we can make the process and the longer we can operate it for, the more people we’ll extract.”

Susanna asked how long it would be until the flights out of Afghanistan end and Heappey said: “The blunt answer is just before the last American flight because that is effectively the envelope in which we can operate.  I can’t tell you if that’s another two days, five days, 10 days. What I can tell you is that we are making sure every single minute is being used to best effect to get people out as quickly as possible.”

On photographs posted on social media of Western aircraft leaving without people on board, Heappey said: “No Royal Air Force plane has left empty, but not all of our flights have been completely full. The reason for that is landing and take off slots at Kabul airport are at a premium, so too is space on the ground and so the way we are generating volume is by having nine aircraft flying in in constant rotation.”

Heappey also said he didn’t share the views of the show’s former guest, injured army veteran Ben Parkinson, that all of the Armed Forces’ work 20 years ago was in vain.

“I don’t necessarily share it and I’ll come on to why, but it breaks my heart to hear people like Ben speaking like that and he’s not alone. There are plenty of my colleagues who I served with… many of them are hurting deeply over what has happened and they’re questioning whether or not it was worth it. I think it was worth it. Firstly, we were soldiers when we were there, we weren’t thinking about what would be happening in August 2021, we were thinking about what we would achieve in the six months there – how we would put into action our training and how we would live up to the reputations of our regiments and we did that very well indeed.”

“I hope every veteran – Ben and all who I served with and the other 150,000 – will hold their chin up high knowing nothing diminishes the job they did. When we were there, we created a security environment in which people were able to go to school, Afghan society fundamentally changed and nothing can take those experiences away from the Afghan people who won them because of our sacrifices in Afghanistan.”

On whether Dominic Raab should have made the call to save Afghan interpreters during his holiday last week, Heanney said: “I don’t think it would have made a difference.”

Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV and ITV Hub.

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