Dominic Raab may be sacked in Boris Johnson's next reshuffle, it has been claimed.
The Foreign Secretary has been under mounting pressure to quit his job after it was revealed he refused to act to help save Afghan interpreters while he was on holiday.
Foreign Office officials urged Mr Raab to speak to the Afghan foreign minister Hanif Atmar to evacuate interpreters last Friday.
But Mr Raab, who was staying at the five-star Amirandes Hotel in Crete, refused to make the call two days before the Taliban took control of Kabul.
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It was thought Mr Raab had delegated the phone call to a junior minister in his department.
But it has since been revealed the call did not take place at all.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has been privately critical of Mr Raab's actions. But came out in his defence yesterday.
Defence Minister James Heappey today said: "The reality is no one phone call would have changed the trajectory of either the speed of collapse of the Afghan government nor the speed of which we’ve been able to get the airlift up-and-running."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4 he added: "I don’t know why the call wasn’t made, I don’t know the detail of who should have made the call and who shouldn’t have done, but I am certain that by the time it was recommended the call should have been made, the trajectory was set.”
A Whitehall source told the Sun: "The PM is livid at Raab and can't believe he didn't take the call", with another source adding, "he will not be the Foreign Secretary after the reshuffle".
A spokeswoman for the PM said he had "full confidence" in Mr Raab.
Mr Raab himself slapped down claims of his resignation. Responding to questions asked if he would quit, Mr Raab bluntly said: "No."
Labour, the SNP, Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru have all called for Mr Raab to either quit or be sacked by the Prime Minister.
For Labour, shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said: “For the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to be on holiday during the biggest foreign policy crisis in a generation is an unforgivable failure of leadership.”
The Times also reported that Sir Philip Barton, Matthew Rycroft and David Williams, the respective permanent secretaries of the Foreign Office, Home Office and Ministry of Defence, were on holiday amid the evacuations from Afghanistan.
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