Boris Johnson says it is ‘complete nonsense’ to claim he ordered evacuation of dogs from Kabul – UK politics live | Politics

The government has apologised for failures in the lead up to the Grenfell Tower fire, admitting to “errors and missed opportunities” that helped create “an environment in which such a tragedy was possible”. As my colleague Robert Booth reports, it told the public inquiry into the disaster it was “deeply sorry” and conceded it did not know how building regulations were being applied on the ground. It said the “system failed”.

Q: Did you or anyone from government have contact with the Taliban before they took over?

Sir Laurie Bristow,the former British ambassador to Afghanistan, says he didn’t. He was accredited to the non-Taliban government.

But Nigel Casey, the PM’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, says he did have contact with them. Those contactss were kept secret. He says there had been contacts for some years.

Survation has released a poll giving Labour a three-point lead over the Conservatives. It says this is Labour’s biggest lead in polls it has carried out since Boris Johnson became PM.

Bristow says, ahead of the evacuation, the number of people in the embassy in Kabul had been reduced from 150 to 75.

He says the demand for evacuation was a “known unknown”. They did not know how many people would want to be evactuated. They did not know how many British passport holders were in the country on any given day.

Q: Wasn’t it likely that there would be a surge?

Bristow says that was “top of everybody’s mind”. But this was just one of several scenarios.

Q: So in April there was no plan to help people like judges who had sat in on narcotics case?

Barton says people might have been assessed under the scheme. He does no answer directly.

Casey says category 4 of ARAP said that some people who did not work directly for the British in Afghanistan (the main beneficiaries of ARAP) would be included.

Q: So did you not think that more than 4,000 people might apply.

Casey says, as the situation worsened during the summer, the number of people wanting to leave went up.

Q: How many people did you expect to have to evacuate?

Barton talks about anticipating the evacuatiuon, but does not put a number on it.

Casey says they expected to evacuate 3,000 Britons, and 4,000 others eligible under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (ARAP).

Barton says no one expected the Taliban to take over Afghanistan as quickly as they did.

He says it was a particularly challenging period for the Foreign Office.

More than 15,000 people were evacuated, he says.

But he says they would like to have evacuated more.

He says there are lessons to be learnt, as with any big event.

The foreign affairs committee is about to take evidence from Sir Philip Barton, head of the Foreign Office, about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He will be appearing with Nigel Casey, the PM’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and a senior FCDO official, and Sir Laurie Bristow, former British ambassador to Afghanistan.

The UK Health Security Agency has announced that the number of confirmed Omicron cases in the UK has gone up by 101 since yesterday and is now 437.

That is a 30% increase.