Recommendation 7

The same praise, however, cannot be given to the efforts of the UK Government’s civilian operations in support of the evacuation. Our colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee have taken extensive evidence and reached persuasive findings in these areas. While it was never going to be possible to evacuate everyone who met Withdrawal from Afghanistan 23 the eligibility criteria as part of the operation, there was an obvious lack of effective co-ordination across Government, with real and painful human consequences for those who reasonably expected to be evacuated but were not. The processing and prioritisation of potential evacuees under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) could and should have been much further advanced by the time that the need for the evacuation became urgent.