MPs recalled to debate the ‘humiliating’ Kabul defeat

MPs have been ordered to cancel their summer holidays and go back to work to discuss the Taliban’s return to rule.

Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle granted the emergency recall – the first since April when Prince Philip died – for a five-hour Commons debate on Wednesday, in response to a request by No.10.

Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, who chairs the Commons foreign affairs committee, dubbed the crisis ‘the biggest single foreign policy disaster’ since the 1956 Suez Crisis. The ex-Army officer, who served in Afghanistan, also criticised the foreign secretary, telling the BBC: ‘I don’t know what’s in the works, because we haven’t heard from Dominic Raab in about a week.’ A Foreign Office spokesman last night said Mr Raab would immediately return from a holiday abroad to ‘personally oversee’ the UK’s response to the crisis.

And Mr Raab (pictured) later tweeted he had ‘deep concerns about the future for Afghanistan’. ‘It is critical that the international community is united in telling the Taliban the violence must end and human rights must be protected,’ he added.

Tobias Ellwood, chair of the defence committee, said the collapse of Kabul’s western-backed government was a ‘humiliation’. But he told Times Radio: ‘We can turn this around but it requires political will and courage.’

Meanwhile, shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy welcomed the recall but tweeted: ‘How has it taken this long?’ She said urgent action was needed to prevent a humanitarian crisis and offer help to Afghan refugees.