Security adviser denies speaking to Downing St on Afghanistan animals evacuation

The UK’s nationwide safety adviser, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, says he didn’t seek the advice of Downing Street earlier than permitting workers from Paul “Pen” Farthing’s animal charity to be listed for evacuation from Afghanistan in August.

Sir Stephen gave proof to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is investigating leaked emails from Foreign Office workers, that counsel the federal government adviser consulted the prime minister’s workplace earlier than giving the go-ahead for Nowzad workers to be evacuated in August.

He advised the choose committee the “actual decision” to name them ahead was delegated to officers and army officers who had a “better understanding of the way to maximise the number of people who we could get safely onto those flights”.

“So exactly where those decisions would have been taken, I’m afraid I cannot quite tell you – almost certainly in PJHQ (Permanent Joint Headquarters),” he stated.

The parliamentary committee is conducting an inquiry into the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Operation Pitting final summer season. Part of their investigation has been wanting into whether or not Mr Farthing, a former Royal Marine who ran the Nowzad animal shelter, was ready to fly his workers and animals out of Afghanistan following a direct instruction from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Evidence provided by whistle-blower Raphael Marshall uncovered the Foreign Office’s questionable dealing with of the disaster in written proof to the committee in December.

Mr Johnson and his spouse, Carrie, an animal rights activist, have all the time denied they intervened to evacuate the charity head and his a whole lot of cats and canine from Afghanistan, regardless of claims to the opposite by one of many charity’s staff, in addition to Mr Marshall.

Sir Stephen, who directed the Foreign Office to listing workers from the animal shelter for air-lifting out of Kabul, advised MPs on Monday he solely did so after the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, tweeted within the early hours of August 25 that: “Now that Pen Farthing’s Nowzad staff have been cleared to come forward, I have authorised MoD to facilitate their processing.”

The charity workers had been cleared to come ahead underneath the “leave outside the rules” (LOTR) scheme that allowed for deserving circumstances that didn’t meet different standards.

Sir Stephen advised the committee he didn’t give a “direction” to evacuate the employees.

“The idea that I gave a direction, (I) certainly didn’t give a direction, all I would have done was check that it was in order to call forward Nowzad on the basis that they were included in the LOTR list,” he stated.

He stated he would have checked together with his workers that Nowzad was on the listing, however admitted he had by no means seen the listing itself. Sir Stephen stated he couldn’t exactly bear in mind with whom he checked “in a very complex and fraught environment”, however stated he would have remembered if he had checked with both the prime minister or the defence secretary.

“I certainly have no recollection of speaking to No 10.”

MPs quizzing the federal government adviser expressed frustration in regards to the lack of readability over who authorised the evacuation of animal charity workers from Afghanistan and criticised Sir Stephen at a number of factors for what they deemed to be an absence of preparation for the assembly.

Updated: April 26, 2022, 10:21 AM