Sue Gray’s impending Partygate report is dominating the Westminster news agenda. But a damning inquiry by MPs calling for the resignation of one of the government’s chief mandarins over the UK’s botched evacuation of Afghanistan should not go unnoticed.
The report by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, led by Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, has accused the Foreign Office of “systemic failures” when withdrawing troops from Kabul, which ultimately “cost lives”.
Dominic Raab, the then-Foreign Secretary, is savaged by the cross-party group of MPs for having a “fundamental lack of seriousness, grip or leadership” after it was revealed he had been on holiday in Crete when Kabul was falling to the Taliban.
And yet it is Sir Philip Barton, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the department, who receives the biggest drubbing of all. He is accused of covering up interference in the fast-tracking of individuals out of the country, including Pen Farthing and his rescue animals.
Barton is also found to have put lives in danger: “The hasty effort to select those eligible for evacuation was poorly devised, managed and staffed; and the department failed to perform the most basic crisis-management functions.
“The committee has lost confidence in the Permanent Under-Secretary, who should consider his position.”
A government spokesman has said it has increased the senior oversight of its “operational and diplomatic response” since last August. Could it be time for a new PPS in King Charles Street?
