Johnson’s government has repeatedly defended its airlift from Kabul against criticism that Britain left thousands of eligible Afghans behind in the country after being caught out by how quickly the Afghan government fell.
However,Marshall said the process for choosing who to evacuate was “arbitrary and dysfunctional”.
He recalled one afternoon when he was the only person processing emails and,despite the urgency of the situation,the expectation remained that staff would only work eight hours a day,five days a week.
He estimated between 75,000 and 150,000 people applied to be evacuated,but fewer than 5 per cent received assistance.
“There were usually over 5000 unread emails in the inbox at any given moment,including many unread emails dating from early in August,” Marshall said in his written evidence to the committee,which is investigating Britain’s departure from Afghanistan.
“These emails were desperate and urgent. I was struck by many titles including phrases such as ‘please save my children’. It is clear that some of those left behind have since been murdered by the Taliban.”