The Foreign Office sacked a staff member who exposed a ‘cover-up’ surrounding its response to the Afghan security crisis of 2021, according to legal documents.
Josie Stewart was dismissed after revealing what she claims were ‘life and death’ errors by senior civil servants reporting to the then Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab.
Mr Raab faced repeated calls to resign following the Taliban’s coup in Afghanistan.
Critics said he should have intervened personally to save former British Army interpreters, who faced execution by the militants.
Instead, as the Taliban stormed the Afghan capital in August that year, the Foreign Secretary was seen relaxing on a beach on the Greek island of Crete.
Josie Stewart was dismissed after revealing what she claims were ‘life and death’ errors by senior civil servants made during the Taliban’s coup of Afghanistan in 2021
The then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab came under fire for continuing his holiday on the Greek island of Crete as the crisis unravelled in Afghanistan
Mr Raab rejected calls to quit and insisted that though he chose to continue his holiday, he also directed his team and engaged with international partners.
He was also responsible for the Afghanistan Crisis Centre, where civil servants such as Ms Stewart worked around the clock to coordinate the evacuation of UK nationals and refugees.
According to legal documents, Ms Stewart was ‘horrified’ when Mr Raab, and then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, ‘made claims publicly and internally about the effective performance of the Crisis Centre’.
Her personal experience of working there was very different.
She claims mismanagement by senior Foreign Office officials caused ‘huge amounts of avoidable suffering’ and ‘probably cost lives’.
Ms Stewart’s case for wrongful dismissal by the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) opened on Thursday at a London employment tribunal.
Traumatised by the apparent discrepancy between Mr Raab’s remarks about the effectiveness of the Crisis Centre and her experience of working there, Ms Stewart turned whistleblower.
She sent emails to the BBC exposing the ‘cover-up’ of failures by officials and ministers tasked to protect UK citizens and Afghans from ‘death, violence, imprisonment or other human rights abuses at the hands of the Taliban’.
When Foreign Office managers identified her as the source of the information, they revoked her security clearances in February 2022 and told her there were no other roles she could perform in the Civil Service.
In legal papers, Ms Stewart claims political and civil service leaders sought to ‘cover-up’ failures and presented ‘a misleading and in some instances even dishonest account’. Pictured: Hundreds of people gather at Kabul airport in 2021
Ms Stewart has launched a public interest defence of her actions, claiming her ‘qualified disclosures’ were necessary to challenge the government’s misleading account of its response to the crisis.
Her written submission to the employment tribunal says: ‘The effectiveness of the UK government’s response to the Afghanistan crisis in the summer of 2021 was and is a matter of the most profound public importance.
‘Large numbers of people (including British nationals and those who had worked with or supported UK activities in Afghanistan) were relying on the UK government.
‘It is hard to imagine a more important government activity. Failures by political leaders and civil servants in London were liable to have life and death (or other extremely serious) consequences on the ground.
‘Learned lessons’: The Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office said it is ‘proud’ of its staff for helping to evacuate 15,000 people in two weeks. Pictured: An infant is lifted by soldiers over the barbed wire fence during an evacuation at Kabul Airport in 2021
‘The UK government failed badly and political and civil service leaders sought to ‘cover-up’ failures, presenting a misleading and in some instances even dishonest account.
‘C’s [the Claimant’s] disclosures arose from those beliefs and her concern that the public know the truth about what had happened behind closed doors.’
The FCDO does not dispute her appraisal of its handling of the Afghan security crisis, but it does dispute Ms Stewart’s public interest defence.
In its summary presented to the court, the government department claims she acted ’emotionally’ and that she later regretted her unauthorised disclosures to the media.
Ms Stewart is expected to give evidence to the employment tribunal on Tuesday.
Her submission to the court continued: ‘C volunteered to work in the FCDO Afghanistan Crisis Centre in London around the time of the ‘fall of Kabul’ in August 2021.
‘She was horrified to find that the Crisis Centre was chaotic, dysfunctional and ineffective and that Ministers and senior officials were pre-occupied with high-profile cases and managing the political and media fallout rather than doing everything possible to evacuate and support those in most need.
‘C was further horrified when, both during and after her time in the Crisis Centre, government ministers (including then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab) made claims, both publicly and internally, about the effectiveness of the Crisis Centre, and the evacuation effort, which she knew to be wrong.
‘C’s evidence about the numerous failures in the FCDO Crisis Centre has not been challenged in these proceedings.
‘Her account aligns with contemporaneous documentation which is before the ET [Employment Tribunal] and with the views of others.
‘Her actions and words reflect who she was and is; a committed and public-spirited person who was deeply troubled by what she observed in the Crisis Centre and by the subsequent portrayals of what happened.
‘She felt morally compelled to speak out.’
Ms Stewart also claims FCDO managers would have ‘whitewashed’ any issues had she opted to raise concerns privately.
She has told the court she feels she would have been punished by her employer for challenging their approach.
The FCDO said: ‘The 2021 Afghanistan response was the biggest mission of its kind in generations and the second largest evacuation carried out by any country – and we are proud of our staff who were tirelessly to evacuate more than 15,000 people within a fortnight.
‘We have learned lessons from the evacuation and have seen the benefits of this work in our response to the Sudan and Niger evacuations as well as our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
‘We have continued to provide assistance to those in Afghanistan, including bringing thousands more people to safety.
‘We cannot comment further while legal proceedings are ongoing.’
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