Daily Mail published this video item, entitled “Afghanistan: Foreign Office civil servant regrets holiday as Kabul fell to the Taliban” – below is their description.
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During an extraordinary committee hearing, Sir Philip Barton revealed that he did not return from a break until August 26, nearly two weeks after the government collapsed and handed the Taliban control. He refused to say where he was on holiday, but disclosed that it was partly in the UK and partly abroad – trying to play down the impact on the crisis response by saying he had put cover in place. ‘If I had my time again I would have come back from my leave earlier,’ Sir Philip said. The mandarin said the evacuation from Kabul following the collapse of the government was ‘one of the most complex and challenging crises we’ve had to face’. But he conceded there were ways it could have been handled better and he ‘wished’ the operation had been able to get more vulnerable people out. Sir Philip, senior colleagues and former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab are all scrambling to fend off damning testimony from a junior civil servant who claims that at times they had been the only person dealing with thousands of emails from those desperate to flee the Taliban .
Daily Mail YouTube Channel
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