Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 5
First report - Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan
Published 24 May 2022
Paragraph 16
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Government policy on Afghanistan All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
When engaging in fragile environments, the Government should keep better records— securely held—on locally-employed staff to ensure that any evacuation can be carried out more effectively. It should devise a policy, based on clear and fair principles, about the assistance that will be offered to local partners in the event of a security deterioration, and report to us when it has done so. In its response to this report, the FCDO should explain why its Lessons Learned review only covers the period from April 2021 onwards, and why it does not cover intelligence matters. We ask the Government to share with this Committee the results of its internal investigation into the failure to destroy sensitive documents at the Kabul Embassy. The FCDO should review its procedures for evacuating embassies and destroying sensitive documents and data, and report back to the Committee on the steps it will take to avoid a similar failure happening again.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, First report - Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan (HC 169), paragraph 16, 24 May 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 29 July 2022 (deadline 24 July 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government accepts that parts of its crisis response need improvement and agrees on future engagement with Afghanistan, but does not agree that it failed to plan for an evacuation or for closing the Kabul Embassy.
- It states that it "does not agree that it failed to plan for a possible evacuation", or that the FCDO failed to plan for the possible closure of the British Embassy in Kabul.
- On people not directly employed by the UK, it "will consider these arguments carefully" in planning years 2 and 3 of Pathway 3 of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, but warns that very broad commitments would, "unless significantly qualified", go beyond the UK's practical ability to resettle people.
- The FCDO says it is "committed to seeing through the full implementation" of its Lessons Learned recommendations, with progress reviewed in November 2022 and an update to the Committee "early next year".
- On future engagement, it agrees that the UK should re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul "as soon as security and political conditions permit", and that aid should be sustained, committing the same amount again this financial year.