My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat an Answer to an Urgent Question in the other place given by my right honourable friend the Minister for Europe and North America. The response is as follows:
“The Government are grateful to the Foreign Affairs Committee for its inquiry and detailed report. We will consider the report carefully and provide a written response on the timeline the committee has requested.
The scale of the crisis in Afghanistan last year was unprecedented in recent times. The report recognises that the Taliban took the country at a pace which surprised themselves, the international community and the former Government of Afghanistan. The many months of planning for the evacuation, and the enormous efforts of staff to deliver it, enabled us to evacuate more than 15,000 people within a fortnight under exceptionally difficult circumstances. The Government could not have delivered this evacuation without planning, grip and leadership.
The evacuation involved processing the details of thousands of individuals by MoD, FCDO and Home Office staff in the UK, and by a team on the ground in Kabul. In anticipation of the situation, the FCDO had reserved the Baron Hotel, so the UK was the only country apart from the United States to have a dedicated emergency handling centre where it could receive and process people at Kabul International Airport. FCDO staff were on the ground in Kabul throughout, alongside other government departments and the military.
RAF flights airlifted people to a dedicated terminal in Dubai, reserved in advance by the FCDO, where evacuees were assisted by another cross-government team. They were then flown on FCDO-chartered flights to the UK where they were received by staff from the Home Office and other departments who ensured they were cared for and quarantined. The evacuation was carefully planned and tightly co-ordinated, and it delivered.
As it does following all crises, the FCDO has conducted a thorough lessons learned exercise. We have written to the FAC with the main findings. Changes have already been implemented by the FCDO, for example in response to the Ukraine crisis.
We all regret that we were not able to help more of those people who worked with us or for us out of Afghanistan during the military evacuation. Since the end of the evacuation last summer, we have helped over 4,600 people to leave Afghanistan. We will continue to work to deliver on our commitment to those eligible for resettlement here in the United Kingdom through the ARAP programme and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme.”