Kabul: Pen Farthing

Lord Watts Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I suspect that, like every MP, and probably every person in this House, I experienced an extraordinarily effective campaign mobilising people to write emails to their representatives. So, like everyone, I received hundreds, maybe thousands of emails from people on this issue, but my position—in writing, on the record—has always been that animals should never have been, and were not, prioritised over people. The noble Baroness asked about specific representation. I could spend hours, probably, relaying the torrent of emails that was received, but I will add one further thing: at no point did the Government as a whole receive any kind of authorisation on this issue, one way or the other, from the Prime Minister, who had no involvement at all. I think that was the point of the Question that was put to me and I emphasise that again.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, it is coming to something when the Prime Minister has a habit of not knowing what was going on in his department, and it sounds as though the Minister does not know what is going on in his. Can he explain why this individual was allowed to get a private jet in when there were still people we wanted to get out of there? How could he do it when the Government could not for a lot of brave people who will potentially give their lives because Ministers failed?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I think that is a completely nonsense question. The idea that the Prime Minister should be engaged in issues around the welfare of a handful of animals when we were engaging, as a Government, in one of the biggest—indeed, the biggest—evacuations this country has ever been involved in is just absurd. I would be appalled if the Prime Minister had been involved in such minutiae, frankly. As I said, we got 17,000 people out in a very short period of time. That is a record—it has never happened before. I think we can salute our Armed Forces and those officials who worked incredibly hard to pull off an extraordinary feat.