Sir Philip Barton, the Foreign Office’s most senior civil servant, has apologised for “inadvertently” misleading a parliamentary committee as it investigates UK policy around the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Prime minister Boris Johnson has been under fire for several months following claims that he had intervened in enabling animals under the care of charitable organisation, Nowzad, to be evacuated from the Afghan capital city of Kabul in August last year.
The charity’s boss, former Royal Marine Pen Farthing, was transported out of Kabul on a chartered plane funded by donations, alongside some 150 animals that his organisation cared for.
Since the UK government had sponsored clearance for the flight to leave, it culminated in a fierce row over whether Farthing and the animals had been given priority over people.
In total, around 15,000 people were evacuated from Kabul as the Taliban seized control of the city.
The PM has always denied any involvement in the decision, but emails from Foreign Office staff were leaked to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Thursday this week, which suggest that Johnson did authorise the evacuation of animals and charity staff, thereby incriminating the prime minister.
The revelation has seen Sir Philip apologise for giving inaccurate information to MPs on the matter.
Prior to the emergence of the emails, the PM’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Nigel Casey, stood before the committee on Tuesday and denied any knowledge of Johnson intervening in the evacuation of Nowzad staff or animals under its care.
Sir Philip also denied that Casey had received “any correspondence referring to the prime minister's intervention in the Nowzad case” in his written evidence submitted to the committee that was published one day before the emails were leaked.
One of the leaked emails, written by an unnamed Foreign Office official in August 2021, said that “the PM has just authorised [Nowzad] staff and animals to be evacuated”.
Another email sent on the same day also referred to “the PM’s decision earlier today to evacuate the staff of the Nowzad animal charity”.
In the wake of these revelations, Sir Philip issued a letter of apology to the parliamentary committee for the “inadvertently inaccurate answers” he had given to questions.
However, Sir Philip denied seeing any of the emails leaked to the committee, saying: “As Nigel [Casey] said to the committee on [Tuesday] he has no recollection of having seen emails in which staff attributed this decision to the prime minister. Nor do I.”
Meanwhile, Johnson has continued to deny any involvement in the matter.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “It’s not uncommon in Whitehall for a decision to be interpreted or portrayed as coming directly from the prime minister, even when that's not the case, and it's our understanding that's what happened in this instance.
“We appreciate it was a frenetic time for those officials dealing with this situation.”
Photo by Andre Klimke on Unsplash
