Raab says 'with benefit of hindsight' he would have come home from holiday earlier

Raab says ‘with benefit of hindsight’ he would have come home from holiday earlier

Aug 25, 2021

Dominic Raab has admitted that with the “benefit of hindsight” he would have come back from holiday earlier amid the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

The Foreign Secretary was speaking to Sky News in his first TV interview since the crisis unfolded.

He faced calls to quit last week after it emerged he remained on his luxury holiday in Crete instead of coming back to deal with the Afghanistan crisis.

Mr Raab added that around 2,000 people have been flown back to the UK from Kabul airport in the last 24 hours and that “the system is operating at full speed”.

“We will use every last remaining hour and day to get everyone we can back, the British nationals, the Afghans who worked so loyally for us, we are getting the Chevening scholars back, also women’s rights defenders and journalists.”

He added: “Mono-nationals, so single-nationality UK who have got documentation, the lion’s share, almost all of them that want to come out have been brought home.

“The ones that are remaining, and we have done an amazing job, two-and-a-half thousand UK nationals if you go back to April… what remains are rather complex cases, large family units where one or other may be documented or may be clearly a national, but it’s not clear whether the rest of them are.”

Mr Raab added that time will be taken to withdraw the UK military operation in Afghanistan.

“The military planners will work out how much time they need to withdraw their equipment, their staff, and what’s really important is we will make the maximum use of all the time we have left.”

The Taliban has put an exit date of 31 August for all foreign evacuations.

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