Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 23
54th Report - Afghanistan Response Route
Published 14 Nov 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Department is not able to determine exactly what it has spent on resettling people through the ARR scheme, because it did not separately identify the costs in its accounting system. The Department told us that it did this because reporting the costs separately would breach the super-injunction and because much of the activity for the secret 54 Q 35 55 Q 42 56 Q 39 57 Q 43 58 Letter from Ministry of Defence, 7 October 2025 59 Qq 40–41 15 scheme and the open ARR scheme was the same.60 Although the criteria for offering resettlement under the ARR and ARAP schemes are different, the resettlement offer was the same. It included: relocation to the UK; transitional accommodation for up to nine months; support to find a settled home; integration support; permission to stay in the UK permanently and to work; and access to education, healthcare, benefits and other public services.61
From: Public Accounts Committee, 54th Report - Afghanistan Response Route (HC 1391), 14 November 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifty-fourth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 14 January 2026).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifty-fourth report from Session 2024-26
Published 19 January 2026.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with four of the Committee's recommendations, including six-monthly updates on ARR resettlement from March 2026, and disagrees with the recommendation on separately capturing ARR costs.
- On updates, the government agrees to write to the Committee every six months from March 2026 until the ARR is complete, though it "may not always be possible to provide a precise breakdown by scheme".
- On the case working system, it agrees, stating the recommendation is implemented and that DACS (introduced in May 2022) addressed "many of the vulnerabilities", with the department "equipped with the right tools to minimise the risk" of a recurrence.
- On scrutiny, it agrees and gives a target date of Spring 2026. The Treasury will issue a Dear Accounting Officer letter on sharing information with the Comptroller and Auditor General in the event of a super-injunction.
- It disagrees on separate ARR costing, saying this would be "disproportionately complex and resource intensive", and instead offers an indicative cost allocation at the end of each financial year, included with the six-monthly updates.