Thousands of emails ignored as PM pretended desperate Afghans were getting UK help, whistleblower claims

Thousands of emails from desperate Afghans trying to flee the Taliban were opened by officials then ignored so that the government could say they were leaving no messages unread, a whistleblower has claimed.

Raphael Marshall, who worked at the foreign office during the widely criticised evacuation from Kabul, made the claim in a damning statement, outlining the government's alleged failure to save the lives of Afghans asking for help.

Marshall's evidence described shocking scenes at the heart of the foreign office during the evacuation, claiming there were regularly 5,000 unread emails from Afghans trying to flee the country, some with heartbreaking subject lines such as "please save my children".

The former desk officer also claimed that junior civil servants were left to make life or death decisions, and just 5% of the 150,000 Afghan nationals who applied for help fleeing received assistance.

"It is clear that some of those left behind have been since murdered by the Taliban," Marshall said.

Many of those claiming asylum were at high risk of being tortured or killed by the Taliban for supporting or coordinating with British and US forces during the war.

The revelations are part of Marshall's 39-page dossier published on Tuesday ahead of a meeting of the foreign affairs select committee in parliament.

On Tuesday morning, then foreign secretary Dominic Raab went on the defensive and said he would make “no apology” for attempting to obtain the “clear facts” on Afghan refugee claims.

Raab himself is accused of creating unnecessary delays by demanding that cases were reformatted.

Raab said asylum claims were on a "well-presented table", amid allegations that it took "several hours" for the foreign office to engage with some.

“In terms of presentation, of course, with the volume of claims coming in, I make no apology for saying I needed the clear facts for each case presented precisely so that we could make swift decisions," the now deputy prime minister and justice secretary told BBC Radio 4's Today.

“You can’t just have emails coming through and examining them one by one, they need to be collated, the key facts drawn out, and, of course, they need to be verified, which is why what London was doing was inextricably linked with the challenges of gleaning information on the ground with the Taliban takeover in relation to Afghanistan.”

Raab, who came under fire for holidaying in Crete as Kabul fell to the Taliban, also said more broadly he did not accept Marshall's description of the scenes in the foreign office during the evacuations earlier this year.

“I don’t accept that characterisation [of events in Marshall's report]," Raab told Sky News.

"I regularly checked that we were properly resourced.

"But the challenge of course with all of these things was the verification of the facts on the ground.”

He defended the UK's process, and said it was "right" there was a check for those "at genuine risk of persecution".

"But what is certainly true is that we had a lot of people rushing to get out of Afghanistan for all sorts of reasons," he said.

“And I think it’s right that we had a process in place to check two things: One, that we were helping those at genuine risk of persecution, or British nationals or people who had worked for the British Government.

“And secondly, making sure that we didn’t allow anyone to come into the UK who might present a threat to the UK."

Watch: Raab questioned on handling of Afghanistan evacuation