An aide to animal charity boss Pen Farthing and a Labor MP have cast doubt on Downing Street’s claim about a letter from Trudy Harrison, a parliamentary aide to Boris Johnson, that allowed him to be deported from Kabul in August.
Number 10 said Harrison was “acting in his capacity as MP for the constituency” when he wrote the letter – as it continued to insist that Boris Johnson protect Farthing and his cats and dogs in the face of desperate Afghans. Huh. Order was not given.
But Dominic Dyer, an animal rights campaigner who lobbied to help Farthing, said on Wednesday that neither he nor Farthing was a constituent of Harrison, but he joined his campaign after being picked up by some of his constituents. happened. Was.
“From my point of view Trudy was in touch with the PM. I understood that the PM was committed to the operation and was watching it happen,” said Dyer, who had been vigorously lobbying the government on the Farthing in late August.
“Penn needed something she could catch at Kabul airport. She did a good job of being fair to Trudy and said I’d see what I could do. I don’t know if she took it to Johnson or not.” no but I can’t believe he didn’t know it was written‘I can’t believe they didn’t know we were tied with loose ends.”
Harrison’s letter, that came out on tuesday night, dated 25 August and signed by him as MP for Copeland in Cumbria and as “Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister”.
It is reported that the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Defense Ministry – who objected at the last minute – had cleared the way for Farthing and the staff to be evacuated from Kabul’s airport to his Naujad charity. “Therefore you are authorized to proceed,” she wrote.
Dyer said he believed the letter was “not a letter from an ordinary constituency MP”. “This demand was made because Penn did not want to rely on Foreign Office emails. It was there to show that he and his staff had a legal right to leave,” he said.
However, Harrison said that the letter, which had a Commons header, “was sent on parliamentary paper to confirm that the appropriate security clearance had been provided”. She added: “While I was actually the PM’s PPS, it was not an issue for him. This was a routine function in response to requests for assistance from several Copeland constituents.
Kris Bryant, Labor member of the foreign affairs select committee that raised the issue earlier this week, said she was skeptical of No. 10 and Harrison’s explanation: “I don’t buy it. It all sounds too convenient and suspicious. It still seems clear that the prime minister didn’t directly order this evacuation. He simply didn’t want his sticky fingerprints on it.
Conservative lawmakers contacted by the Guardian said it would have been unusual to deliberately mention her role as Johnson’s aide in the Commons if she did not intend to indicate that she has the support of the prime minister. Party sources said there was unease over his approach to prioritizing “animals ahead of the Afghans” in the final days in Kabul.
Farthing and more than 150 cats and dogs were rescued on one of the last flights from Kabul, but last-minute delays at the airport meant that more than 60 employees and dependents of Naujad Charity could cross the Pakistan border before arriving. Had to do UK had to do it. “It was always a comprehensive humanitarian mission,” Dyer said.