Former Tory defence secretary Ben Wallace has strongly criticised his former ministerial colleague Johnny Mercer over comments about the Afghan resettlement programme. In an interview with LBC, Wallace rejected Mercer's description of the process as 'the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials'.
Wallace defended his own record, stating that he and Priti Patel had worked to accelerate the return of Afghans under threat before the fall of Kabul. He emphasised the scale of the rapid collapse in Afghanistan, which left many people at risk, and praised the Times defence editor Larisa Brown for campaigning for a scheme to help Afghans who had worked with British forces.
The exchange comes amid ongoing scrutiny of the government's handling of Afghan resettlement. Separately, Kemi Badenoch suggested that the civil servant responsible for a data leak involving Afghan applicants should have been sacked, expressing frustration over the inability to dismiss such officials.
