Boris Johnson personally intervened to have a plane full of animals airlifted from Afghanistan during the UK’s withdrawal last year, a second Foreign Office official has claimed.
Senior official Josie Stewart said it was “widespread knowledge” in the Foreign Office that the Prime Minister was behind the decision to airlift over 100 cats and dogs from a UK charity ahead of the evacuation of Afghans attempting to flee the Taliban.
The Foreign Office whistleblower made the incendiary claim in written evidence to a Commons inquiry published on Monday.
There was widespread anger last August amid reports that animals from the Nowzad charity run by former soldier Paul 'Pen' Farthing were evacuated on 28 August, two days before the final British flight left as part of Operation Pitting.
The Prime Minister has always denied being involved in the process and in January he described the claims as “total rhubarb”.
But Stewart directly contradicted the PM and said “it was widespread knowledge in the FCDO Crisis Centre that the decision on Nowzad’s Afghan staff came from the Prime Minister”
Stewart stated: "I saw messages to this effect on Microsoft Teams, I heard it discussed in the Crisis Centre including by senior civil servants, and I was copied on numerous emails which clearly suggested this.”
Stewart said while she was not aware of a “deliberate” decision to prioritise animals over people, it was not in line with policy.
She added: “The issue also certainly carried significant opportunity cost in terms of the amount of senior civil servant time spent on the case.”
The written testimony of Josie Stewart backs up fellow whistleblower Raphael Marshall’s account of the chaos around Operation Pitting which saw 15,000 people evacuated from Kabul airport.
In her submission to the committee, Stewart said she expected to lose her job as a result of speaking out but had a duty to do so if the “public or parliament has been deliberately misled by the government”.
Speaking about the Afghanistan evacuation, she added: “I feel a strong sense of moral injury for having been part of something so badly managed, and so focused on managing reputational risk and political fallout rather than the actual crisis and associated human tragedy.”
In January the committee also published an internal FCDO memo in which an official said Johnson had “authorised” the evacuation of “animals”.
David Lammy, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, said: “Boris Johnson is a serial liar who is unfit to be Prime Minister.”
He added: “This is further confirmation that the Prime Minister put the lives of animals ahead of humans on a personal whim and then lied about doing so.”
Senior Foreign Office officials will appear before the Commons Foreign Affairs select committee on Monday to answer further questions following Stewart’s evidence.
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