My Lords, I agree with every single word and syllable of my noble friend Lord Patten. Perhaps I may congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, on getting this debate and say what fellow feeling I have for her as a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists myself. I returned from Hong Kong in 1970 as a qualified Chinese interpreter, joined the institute of linguists and was able for a short period to put even those three glorious letters behind name until I let my membership lapse—so I suppose that I should say that I am an ex-member. Nevertheless, I have been on both sides of this experience.

By way of light relief from what is a pretty gloomy and dark subject, one of those who studied Chinese with me was American and ended up as the interpreter to Kissinger when he went to see Chairman Mao in the famous ping-pong diplomacy. He tried to pretend just to be the Secretary of State. Interpreters also get an inside view of things that history does not record. He recalls the following conversation between Kissinger and Chairman Mao. Kissinger, trying to put the exchange on a non-official basis, decided to approach this conversation on the basis not of a Secretary of State and the Chairman of the People’s Republic but of two historians. His opening gambit was, “Mr Chairman, we are both historians and I am fascinated by the what-would-have-happened-ifs of history. What do you think would have happened, Mr Chairman, if the person who was assassinated in 1963 was not John F Kennedy but Nikita S Khrushchev?”. Mao thought for a moment or two, then said, “Do you know, I do not think that that nice, rich Greek ship-owner would have married Mrs Khrushchev”.

Anyway, that is the inside and nicer part of this job. There is a nastier part, too, and I know it from both sides. I was an interpreter—not an active service interpreter—and a member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, indeed of Special Forces, where I relied day in, day out on interpreters. I could not have done my job had it not been for them. As my noble friend rightly said, they are at the front line—at the front of the front line. There is no point being an interpreter a mile back; you are there at the front with the person who is taking the bullets. By the way, unlike our troops, who did a magnificent job in Afghanistan, interpreters do not go home after six months. They were at that job 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the whole four years we were there. Nor do they just place themselves at risk, as our soldiers do; their families live in the community, too, and are at risk. This is a job of immense importance and danger, and one without which our troops simply could not have done their own jobs.

My noble friend the Minister is a very decent man. I know he is doing his very best in these circumstances. It is not him I criticise but the Government. I will say nothing that he has not heard from my lips in our private conversations. This is a discreditable policy to a group of people to whom we owe an unquestionable duty of care and an unquestionable national duty of honour. I do not at this moment want to talk about those within the main scheme that the Government have created. You can have your criticisms of that but it seems perfectly adequately administered. I speak about those who fall just outside it because they were a day short or left a day early. These exceptions to the case were supposed to be covered by what is called the Government’s intimidation policy. To answer my noble friend’s question, there are around 200 or so of them in total—that is all. I cannot believe that the Government are taking this ridiculous position that shames our nation on the basis of 200 of them. I think of the Government’s sensitivity on immigration, but do not believe that the most red in tooth and claw, frothing at the mouth member of UKIP would mind letting in those 200 people who served our nation so magnificently. How many have been let in? The answer is one—just one. The Government claim that this policy is enacted on the basis of a benefit of the doubt to the claimant yet just one has been allowed in. That does not speak to the benefit of the doubt on the part of the claimants here.

By the way, on what the Government say, I pick out a sentence from the Minister’s own letter to me recently. He said that every case is thoroughly investigated. Examine this matter and you discover that it is not, the reason being that the investigation unit for the intimidation policy in Kabul cannot even go to the places where these people live because it is too dangerous to do so. What a Catch-22, ludicrous situation. We say that these people do not live under danger, yet they live in areas so dangerous that we cannot go and investigate for ourselves and therefore that investigation must be carried out by the Afghan army or the Afghan police. I do not have to tell noble Lords to what extent both these organisations are thoroughly infiltrated—the police more so than the army—by the Taliban. Do we take their judgment in these matters, or the judgment of other investigators? The writ of the Taliban now extends further and further across Afghanistan so that is simply unacceptable. If it is too dangerous for our investigators to go to those places, surely it is too dangerous for those who have given such magnificent service—and their families—to live in those places. That is not giving the benefit of the doubt. Sadly, I have to say to my noble friend, as I have said to his face, that this is a shameful policy which, if you look into it, collapses in front of you.

We can see that clearly from a number of cases that have been raised. I wrote to my noble friend about the case of Nizamuddin Aftab. He was living separately from his family in a hotel, because he knew what would happen and, in due course, it did. The Taliban turned up at his house and took his family—his wife, his mother, his brothers and his father—searched the house and asked the father where he was. The father refused to say where he was, so they beat him up in front of the family. Then they beat up his brothers. He then tried to get to Kabul to report that. He rang the intimidation unit, but there was no answer, so he made the journey by car, only to be told by the intimidation unit that no appointment had been made and that he should come back later. He was subsequently rung to fix an interview, but no date was given. The investigation started, but no visit was made.

In his most recent letter of 5 February, the Minister said that that matter was under investigation and that he would let me know about it in the very near future. I am sad to have to report that, despite prompts, my point has not been replied to. I do not know what has happened here. I am told that he may have been rejected. By the way, I was also told that he was relocated, so I looked into how far away he had been relocated. Was he relocated out of the country? No, although there was a clear case of intimidation against his family—goodness knows. Can your Lordships imagine how we would feel if that was our family in those circumstances? He was simply put back into the hotel in which he was sheltering when the Taliban attacked his family.

Then there is the case referred to by my noble friend—by the way, his name is Chris and I do know his Afghan name, but I am not prepared to give it for obvious reasons. He was an interpreter for our Special Forces. At some stage, he had to leave the camp to go back to his family and he was provided with a pistol to protect himself. He returned that pistol afterwards. There is some doubt, because of some bureaucratic hiccup—God knows, this is an active service front—about how the pistol was returned, but in consequence he is on the watch-list.

The watch-list, by the way, is constructed by anybody who on a roadblock or in a house search feels in some sense, however heavily or quietly, a worry about a particular person. They put that person on the watch-list; they could be a bureaucrat. That watch-list is a condemnation. Chris’s pistol becomes a pistol that not only saved his life but now endangers it. Because there is a question, he is put on the watch-list. That watch-list is not subject to scrutiny or challenge. No one is allowed to see the information on there, no one is permitted to question it, no one is permitted to check the facts on it. It now seems very likely that Chris will be rejected on the basis that he is on the watch-list, and he can never challenge that. It seems very likely that he is now condemned to stay in Afghanistan. By the way, he was the person who was shot—shot in the leg. When he turned up at the investigation unit to be checked, the man who checked him in said, “I do not believe your story about the bullet; I want to see it”, so he had to unbandage his leg to show the shot in his leg.

I do not know whether that young man who has served us so well has been rejected or not—perhaps the Minister will tell us—but I cannot imagine a more clear-cut case for the intimidation policy, if it is to mean anything, to be applied.

I would also like the Minister to answer this question for me, because I think it is relevant. Have there been any interpreters who finally, on giving up, have made it to Britain and applied for asylum here? If there are, would they be or have they been deported as non-asylum cases? The Minister should provide a very clear answer on that.

I am sorry to speak so roughly but, as your Lordships may imagine, I feel very strongly indeed about this. I say to the Minister that it is only a matter of time—it could happen during the election—before the inevitable will happen and one of those people will finally be killed. When they are and the public demand to know what has gone on, we will strip away this Potemkin front to reveal a policy which is shameful not only in its principle but in its application. Then the Minister will have to account for a policy that may give the Government some comfort in this matter but ought to give us none, because we will see exposed before us the raw bones of a policy that means precisely nothing except danger for those who gave us such wonderful service and dishonour for our country.