A scheme to help Iraqi interpreters was devised to maintain the Government's reputation and “respond to perceptions” that it had a moral obligation to its local staff, The Times has learnt.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been accused of “dreadful cynicism” over its handling of the issue, after explosive internal documents revealed that officials had decided they could do “little to protect them from attacks outside the workplace”.

At the end of summer last year the Prime Minister agreed to examine plans to help some of the approximately 20,000 Iraqis who had risked their lives working for British forces in Iraq. But from the outset, officials attempted to restrict the scope of the scheme, urging ministers to opt for a “relatively defensible” and “manageable” option.

Only 23 Iraqis and their families have been able to resettle in Britain since the start of the scheme. Several former interpreters have called it flawed because it applies only to anyone who worked for the British Government for a minimum of 12 months from the start of January 2005.

Hundreds of Iraq interpreters rebuffed by UK

Nearly half of applications to settle in Britain have been rejected by the MoD already despite safety fears

Multimedia

• Video: the online war

• Pictures: Life in Iraq

BACKGROUND

• Story of brothers who worked for the British

• I’ve no regrets, says interpreter

• What’s Arabic for ‘we’ll stand by you’?

• Abandoned: the 91 Iraqis who risked all

Related Links

• Where are your tributes to justice now, PM?

• Iraqi interpreters fly out to a new life in Britain

• Story of brothers who worked for the British

Britain has been criticised for not following the more generous schemes of the United States, Australia and Denmark. On Wednesday a judge threw out attempts to widen the scheme to allow more people to apply.

Documents obtained by The Times reveal the Government estimated that probably about 20 local staff had been killed in Iraq by September 2007, when the scheme was being drawn up. Nine had been already been killed that year, and Britain was aware that the security situation in the South was becoming “progressively more severe”.

However, the limited assistance scheme was drawn up despite the knowledge that Iraqi staff were under increasing risk and British Forces were unable to offer adequate protection because of “current policy and resource constraints”.

A Foreign Office document circulated on September 13 said that the plan should “be generous enough to maintain HMG's reputation as a caring and committed employer of local staff in our overseas networks/deployments, and to respond to perceptions that we have a moral obligation to many of our Iraqi staff, over and above our legal duty of care”.

The other priorities were that the scheme should be affordable, flexible enough to respond to a sharp rise in requests and not impair the ability to recruit future staff.

The documents show that officials wanted to limit the scheme because they feared hostile media coverage if large numbers of Iraqis were to come to Britain; they expected negative coverage about cost, housing pressures and “social cohesion difficulties”.

It also revealed that the Government could never help the vast majority of the 20,000 Iraqis who have worked with British soldiers since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 because they had incomplete employment records.

Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “The public will be alarmed and dismayed that the Government's first - and instinctive - concern was with their reputation and how they spin the media management of this serious issue, rather than addressing it in the right and proper manner.”

Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “How cynical. How dreadful. We have a legal and moral obligation to ensure that these people and their families are protected. The test has to be: anybody whose life is in jeopardy - and there are considerable numbers - must have access to the United Kingdom.

“We should have thought about this before. It's one of the costs of war.”

One former interpreter who has been stranded in Jordan for five months waiting for accommodation to become available in Britain said: “I think the scheme was drawn up in response to media pressure. It is a very hard scheme.

“If they really wanted to help us then they should have moved us quickly. There is no other government acting in this way. Look at the United States, Australia and Denmark - they all made the process very quick. Why is it just the British Government that makes it long?”

Colonel Bob Stewart, who as commander of Britain's UN contingent in Bosnia had relied heavily on interpreters, said: “I believe we have a deep, urgent and moral responsibility to look after people that have actually worked with us. The Iraqi experience is even more urgent than it was in Bosnia. In Iraq they are being targeted.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday: “Ministers said at the time that the whole aim was to show gratitude to our staff. One has to strike a balance to be fair to those who have worked in difficult circumstances, but also setting certain criteria which recognise the particular length of service people have worked for us.”

In its discussions, the Foreign Office said it did not want to be viewed as “buying off” its local staff by offering money in Iraq as opposed to the chance of relocation in Britain. “There would be presentational risks in appearing to ‘buy off' staff rather than provide them with a more secure long-term option [ie, admission to the UK],” the Foreign Office paper said.

The fears of a potential flood of asylum-seekers were never realised, in part because the security situation in southern Iraq improved.

Half of the former employees eligible for the assistance, some 250 people. chose to take the one-off cash payment, while the others opted to try for asylum through the United Nations-sponsored route.

The number of serving workers who opted for the money was even higher, some 80 per cent, according to a source at the Ministry of Defence, who described the ratio as a good indication that people felt safe to stay at home.

Iraqi interpreters, however, say that the reason for the low uptake on the asylum option is because the scheme takes so long and contains so many obstacles that it deters applications.

What the Foreign Office documents said

“HMG's locally engaged (LE) staff in Iraq face a high level of threat as a result of their association with us. Several have been murdered; many more have been subject to intimidation and attack. There is evidence that this threat has grown progressively worse, and also that the threat to some staff may persist after they have left our employ.

“Departments who employ Iraqi LE staff ... do what we reasonably can to ensure the safety of serving staff, in line with our duty of care. But in practice, we can do little to protect them from attacks outside the workplace ...

“The objective, therefore, is to develop a scheme for protecting and/or assisting those LE staff in Iraq who most need such help, or are most likely to do so in future.

“Such a scheme should, as far as possible, observe and balance the following main requirements:

- it should be generous enough to maintain HMG's reputation as a caring and committed employer of local staff in our overseas networks/departments, and to respond to perceptions that we have a moral obligation to many of our Iraqi staff, over and above our legal duty of care;

- it should be designed to respond to the anticipated surge in requests for assistance from serving staff in the south as we reduce our footprint there ... ;

- it should not undermine our operational effectiveness and our ability to recruit and retain locally employed staff both now and in the longer term, or impact on other theatres ... ;

- it should be affordable;

- any criteria used to identify sub-sets of staff who will qualify for assistance should be clear, consistent and legally defensible;

- it should not provoke an increase in new asylum applications made by Iraqis, or in legal challenges from failed asylum-seekers.

“... A cut-off date ... should also have the effect of restricting eligible numbers, since the majority of former staff are likely to have been employed in the early days of Op Telic, when UK force levels were at their highest ... ”

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