Afghanistan: Foreign Office civil servant Sir Philip Barton was on holiday as Taliban seized Kabul

The Afghanistan evacuation effort at the Foreign Office was one of 'dysfunction and chaos' a whistleblower has said, as ITV News Political Correspondent Daniel Hewitt reports.

The Foreign Office's top civil servant was on holiday and stayed on holiday while the Afghan capital fell into the hands of the Taliban.

Sir Philip Barton, who is permanent-under secretary, went on holiday on August 9, six days before Kabul fell, and did not return until August 26 - a week and a half after the Taliban takeover.

Sir Philip told a hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee that he regrets not coming back earlier but said it would not have changed the outcome in Afghanistan, the number of people evacuated.

MPs heard how by August 11 it was deemed the British embassy in Kabul was no longer safe. And by August 13, diplomats were saying the Afghan government was unlikely to hold.

Sir Philip said: “I have reflected a lot in August on my leave, and if I had my time again I would have come back from my leave earlier than I did.”

He said he did put in place cover arrangements and “stayed in touch with the department all the way through the period”.

He admitted he should have been “more visible to our people who were working on the crisis", but said: “I don’t believe me being present in London as opposed to on leave and keeping in touch with the department would have changed the outcome, you know the number of people who were evacuated.”

Asked why he chose to go on holiday when by August 9, there was a “pretty clear idea of what was going on”, Sir Philip told MPs: “When I went on leave, including on the ninth, there was no inevitability at that point that Kabul was going to fall in the period that it fell in.

“The best assessment was that it could take some time. There was no certainty over the timescale.”

Committee chair Tom Tugendhat said he found it “strange” that Sir Philip chose to remain on holiday after Dominic Raab, who was then foreign secretary, had returned.

A whistleblower also criticised the UK's evacuation effort in Afghanistan, prompting politicians to brand it as having prioritised "bureaucracy over humanity".

The Foreign Office insider claimed just 5% of Afghan nationals who applied for help to flee the country after the Taliban swept to power actually received help.

He said: "It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban".

In evidence published by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, Raphael Marshall – who worked for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) during the evacuation effort – told how at one point he was the only person monitoring an inbox where pleas for help were directed.

Mr Marshall’s written evidence was published by the committee on Tuesday, and its chairman, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, said the “failures betrayed our friends and allies and squandered decades of British and Nato effort”.

And he said it painted the evacuation as “one of lack of interest, and bureaucracy over humanity”.

Mr Marshall worked in the Afghan Special Cases team, which handled the cases of Afghans who were at risk because of their links with the UK, but who did not work directly for the UK government.

He estimated that “between 75,000 and 150,000 people (including dependants) applied for evacuation” to the team under the leave outside the rules (LOTR) category.

And he estimated that “fewer than 5% of these people have received any assistance” and states that “it is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban”.

He said the government’s public statements over hopes the Taliban had changed did not tally with the information he was receiving.

The former foreign office official also told MPs soldiers were put at risk to facilitate the evacuation of animals from the Nowzad shelter following a request from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Former Royal Marine Paul “Pen” Farthing ran the Nowzad animal charity’s shelter and launched a high-profile campaign to get his staff and animals out, using a plane funded through donations.

Were animals prioritised over Afghans in the evacuation?

But Mr Johnson dismissed the claim as "complete nonsense" adding the evacuation operation "was one of the outstanding military achievements of the last 50 years of more".

The PM praised the role of the foreign office, home office and border force in the evacuation.

What else has the whistleblower alleged about the Afghanistan evacuation?

Mr Marshall said that no member of the team working on the cases of people applying to schemes to come to the UK had “studied Afghanistan, worked on Afghanistan previously, or had a detailed knowledge of Afghanistan”.

Adding that junior officials were “scared by being asked to make hundreds of life and death decisions about which they knew nothing”.

Mr Marshall alleged that then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab “did not fully understand the situation”.

Emails were opened but not actioned, and he felt “the purpose of this system was to allow the Prime Minister and the then Foreign Secretary to inform MPs that there were no unread emails”.

He said: “These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’.

"The contrast between Her Majesty’s government’s statements about a changed Taliban and the large number of highly credible allegations of very grave human rights abuses HMG has received by email is striking," she said.

Mr Raab, who was moved from the Foreign Office to become Justice Secretary after his handling of the crisis, sought to defend his record from the allegations on Tuesday.

Asked if he accepted the whistleblower's claims the evacuation was dysfunctional, chaotic, and that he himself did not understand the situation, Mr Raab told ITV News: "I don't accept that."

"We secured the evacuation of 15,000 people in just two weeks," he added.

'I don't accept that': Mr Raab denies the whistleblower's claims

Quizzed on whether he was "too slow," Mr Raab said "hours to make decisions on individual cases [...] reflects the fact that we acted very swiftly but also had to verify the facts in relation to a lot of undocumented people coming forward - were they eligible, were they really at risk and secondly we needed to make sure that they didn't post a threat to the UK."

It comes against a backdrop of a worsening situation in Afghanistan, in the past three months more than 300,000 people have crossed illegally into Iran.

The estimates from the Norwegian Refugee Council suggest 4,000 to 5,000 Afghans are fleeing the country each day.

Since the Taliban takeover in mid-August, Afghanistan’s economic collapse has accelerated, robbing millions of work and leaving them too poor to feed their families.

ITV News Correspondent Juliet Bremner reported just weeks ago on the bleak situation facing those who remain in Afghanistan

Mr Tugendhat, chairman of the committee due to hear evidence on Tuesday, said: “These allegations are serious and go to the heart of the failures of leadership around the Afghan disaster, which we have seen throughout this inquiry.

“The evidence we’ve heard alleges dysfunction within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and substantial failings throughout the Afghanistan evacuation effort.

“The evacuation has been described as a success by some, but these allegations point to a very different story – one of lack of interest, and bureaucracy over humanity. It proved to be a true test of the leadership and effectiveness of the Foreign Office, with the lives of many of our friends and allies in the balance."

Responding to Mr Marshall's comments, a government spokesperson said: “UK government staff worked tirelessly to evacuate more than 15,000 people from Afghanistan within a fortnight.

Labour's Emily Thornberry says the Foreign Office was not deployed properly

“This was the biggest mission of its kind in generations and the second-largest evacuation carried out by any country. We are still working to help others leave.

“More than 1,000 FCDO staff worked to help British nationals and eligible Afghans leave during Op Pitting. The scale of the evacuation and the challenging circumstances meant decisions on prioritisation had to be made quickly to ensure we could help as many people as possible.

“Regrettably we were not able to evacuate all those we wanted to, but our commitment to them is enduring, and since the end of the operation we have helped more than 3,000 individuals leave Afghanistan”.

Emily Thornberry, a Labour MP and former shadow foreign secretary, said the situation in Afghanistan was undoubtedly "chaotic".

"The Foreign Office was simply not deployed properly and frankly, the leadership comes from the top on this," she said, singling out Mr Raab.