Raab under fire after British embassy workers ‘left behind details of Afghan staff for Taliban to find’

The foreign secretary has come under fire after papers identifying seven Afghans were left behind in the British embassy in Kabul, risking their lives if found by the Taliban.

The Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee is launching an inquiry after a reporter for The Times discovered papers identifying seven Afghans on Tuesday in the embassy. After calling the contact numbers, The Times learned that some of the staff members had already been evacuated to the UK, but others had been left behind.

The newspaper said it had been able to pass on the contact details of three Afghans who remained in Kabul to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), which then rescued them and their eight family members.

As well as the contact details of Afghans who had worked for the embassy, CVs of local people who had applied for jobs were found strewn across the floor, the newspaper reported. Afghans who helped Western countries fear reprisals by Taliban fighters.

The fate of at least two Afghans whose details were found remains unknown.

An FCDO spokesperson said: “We have worked tirelessly to secure the safety of those who worked for us including getting three families to safety. During the drawdown of our embassy every effort was made to destroy sensitive material.”

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said that the incident was “clearly not good enough”, saying that Boris Johnson “will be asking some questions” about how the documents were left behind. Labour said Dominic Raab has “serious questions to answer” and that the shredding of sensitive material should have been a “top priority”.

Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, said: “The foreign secretary has claimed he was too busy overseeing operational decisions to call the Afghan foreign minister. This incident raises questions about what precisely he was doing in the hours before Kabul fell to the Taliban. The destruction of sensitive materials and the safe evacuation of the embassy should have been a top priority.”

Meanwhile, former foreign and defence secretary Lord Hammond said: “If some documents slipped through the net it’s extremely serious, a very serious lapse of security.”

The embassy was evacuated on 15 August. It came after the foreign secretary, who was on holiday in Greece at the time, refused to speak with his Afghan counterpart about evacuating interpreters who worked for the UK, just two days before Kabul fell.

Mr Raab has said he will not step down after it was revealed that he delegated the crucial call to a junior minister, leading to calls for his resignation from Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP.