Patrick Christys: I don’t understand how we can justify leaving Afghanistan veterans to rot but we can jump through hoops to help refugees

Should we be housing our homeless military veterans before we house Afghan refugees?

As we prepare to open our country’s arms to Afghans fleeing the Taliban, local councils are scrambling around to find room for them.

According to Whitehall sources, the average size of an Afghan family is 7 people, the largest so far has been 12.

Loads of people have been asking – where do they all go? Well, some of the solutions to this dilemma include building new homes for them, councils renting private properties or even buying properties.

In fact, there’s even talk of retaining former military accommodation that was about to be sold off.

I find all of this a bit strange because there are roughly 7,000 homeless military veterans currently lining the streets of Britain and, supposedly, councils haven’t got the resources or the accommodation to house them.

I don’t think that’s true. I think they just haven’t got the will or the desire to house our veterans.

Have a think about this – we have supposedly already resettled 2,000 Afghan refugees. So they’re already in accommodation either permanently or in quarantine hotels. We’re about to accept another 5,000 this year. That, ladies and gentlemen, is 7,000 people. The same number of homeless military veterans we currently have.

I don’t want to pit military veterans against Afghan refugees. I don’t want it to be one or the other. I don’t think it needs to be. But it looks like that’s where we are. It looks like local councils and indeed our government has decided to prioritise Afghan refugees over military veterans. Why is that?

We’re currently looking homeless military veterans in the eye and telling them that we don’t have anywhere for them to live, that they’ll have to spend another night on the streets, while we simultaneously halt the sale of a decommissioned military barracks so we can house thousands of Afghan refugees inside it.

How does that work? Some people may say, well, the Afghan refugees are in more urgent need. And there’s a case for that – at least our military veterans are in a safe country, the refugees are fleeing the Taliban for goodness sake.

Yes, I get all that. But quantify urgent need. We almost have as many military suicides as we had deaths in armed combat in Afghanistan. We have thousands of veterans on antidepressant medication. They fought a battle in Afghanistan and now many of them are losing the battle inside their own heads. Many, sadly but understandably, turn to substance abuse to get through the day.

And it’s not just the veterans impacted by this. It’s their wives, their children, their loved ones. So when it comes to needing urgent support, our veterans are surely as pressed for time as anyone else.

I want to be very clear, I think we should be doing both – we should be doing our duty and housing our military heroes, and we should be housing the Afghan refugees who come over here. I just don’t understand how we can justify leaving the people we sent to do the most dangerous, damaging job in the world, for Queen and country, to rot on the pavements, but we can jump through hoops to help other people.

It’s worth noting, that rightly or wrongly, there is clearly more of a desire in this country to house Afghan refugees than there is to house homeless military veterans.