Foreign Office chief urged to resign over Kabul retreat
Sir Philip Barton should be ashamed of his role in disastrous handling of the Afghan crisis, say MPS
MPS have called on the head of the Foreign Office to resign over the “disastrous” evacuation of Afghanistan and suggested that he “obscured” Boris Johnson’s role in the Nowzad animal charity controversy.
In an excoriating report, Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee said Sir Philip Barton thwarted their investigation into last summer’s withdrawal from Kabul by providing misleading and evasive answers.
The influential body of backbenchers, chaired by the Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, indicated the civil servant had deliberately withheld information “in order to shield” the Prime Minister from “political accountability”.
It said the “integrity of the department’s senior leaders” was “called into question” by Sir Philip’s response to the inquiry and announced that it had “lost confidence” in his ability to head up the 17,300-strong department.
The committee said that “we have yet to be offered a plausible alternative explanation” to the claims that Mr Johnson intervened to ensure that Pen Farthing and his charity’s animals were airlifted out of the country as Afghans were left behind.
Mr Johnson has previously dismissed the claims he ordered the evacuation as “total rhubarb”. The report was also damning of then foreign secretary Dominic Raab, who it said had shown a failure of leadership and “vacillated” on key decisions before trying to palm the blame off on to other departments.
In contrast, it praised the “heroic effort” of British troops and officials on the ground in Kabul, adding: “We regret that their sacrifices were undermined by deep failures of leadership in the system they were working within.”
MPS expressed particular concern at the fact the Nowzad controversy only emerged because whistleblowers came forward, accusing top brass of providing answers that were “at best intentionally evasive and often [misleading]”.
Sir Philip changed his story once evidence that contradicted his initial explanations emerged, they said, expressing doubt at his claims of ignorance and criticising the fact there were “no notes taken or decisions ] recorded” at key moments.
“Officials should not be expected to engage – nor be complicit – in obscuring the facts in order to shield others from political accountability”, they wrote.
“Those who lead the Foreign Office should be ashamed that two civil servants of great integrity and clear ability felt compelled to risk their careers to bring to light the appalling mismanagement of the Afghan crisis.”
Mr Tugendhat said: “While junior officials demonstrated courage and integrity, chaotic and arbitrary decision-making runs through this inquiry.
A government spokesman defended Operation Pitting and said staff had worked “tirelessly” to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan in a fortnight.