Dominic Raab has launched a defence of his handling of the evacuation of Afghanistan after a whistleblower alleged he led a “dysfunctional” and “chaotic” operation while foreign secretary.
Raphael Marshall, who worked for the Foreign Office during the effort, claimed that just 5% of Afghan nationals who applied to flee under one UK scheme received help.
Some were murdered after being left behind in Kabul after the Taliban swept to power, he alleged while giving devastating evidence to a select committee of MPs.
Mr Marshall told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in written evidence that at one point he was the only person monitoring an inbox where pleas for help were directed.
Mr Raab, who was moved from the Foreign Office to become Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister after his handling of the crisis, sought to defend his record from the allegations on Tuesday.
“It’s inaccurate in certain respects, the suggestion that junior desk officers were making decisions is just not correct,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“There’s a difference between processing and deciding, so I’m afraid I don’t accept that characterisation.
“On the charge it took several hours to make decisions, we’re not talking about days, it’s not been suggested weeks, but several hours to make sure we had the facts, and that, as between myself, the Home Secretary and the Defence Secretary, decisions were made and actually I would suggest that’s a reasonably swift turnaround.
One of Mr Marshall’s allegations was that at one point the Cabinet minister “declined to make a decision” on whether to admit a group of women’s rights activists “without a properly formatted submission with a table setting out multiple cases”.
It would have been reasonable for Mr Raab to defer to the crisis centre’s judgment but “in the circumstances it is hard to explain why he reserved the decision for himself but failedto make it immediately”, the former official said.
Mr Raab responded: “And in terms of presentation, of course with the volume of claims coming in I make no apology for saying I needed the clear facts that each case presented precisely so we can make swift decisions.
“Some of the criticism seems rather dislocated from the facts on the ground, the operational pressures that with the takeover of the Taliban, unexpected around the world… I do think that not enough recognition has been given to quite how difficult it was.”
Among the flaws alleged by Mr Marshall, was that the process of selecting who could be airlifted out was “arbitrary and dysfunctional” and that thousands of emails were going unread.
He said that Foreign Office colleagues were “visibly appalled by our chaotic system”.
Tom Tugendhat the senior Tory MP who chairs the committee the evidence was given to, 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”.
Shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry said Mr Raab should consider his position in the Cabinet in light of the testimony, which she said she was “disgusted” and “truly shocked” to hear.
“There is plenty of evidence that Dominic Raab is not capable of making the sort of decisions that our country deserves in any way,” the Labour MP told Sky News.
