Conservative MP Royston Smith asks who authorised the prioritisation of animals over people when it came to evacuation.

There was no decision to evacuate animals over people, replies Sir Philip Barton.

How did animals get through then, asks the MP.

Nigel Casey says the flight was chartered by the animal charity Nowzad, run by former soldier Pen Farthing, and adds that it only left after the UK had finished evacuating people.

"It was only UK military who were left," he says.

Whistleblower Raphael Marshall has said soldiers were put in danger to help Nowzad, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson stepped in to ensure the charity's animals and workers were a priority.

Mr Johnson has denied intervening, saying: "No, that's complete nonsense."

Animal rights campaigner Dominic Dyer insisted the prime minister was involved, telling the BBC he had contacted the PM's wife, Carrie Johnson, to lobby on the issue - saying she would have given him a "hard time about it" - and that he had "forced the prime minister's arm".

Read more here.

Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, who has previously worked at the foreign office, asks if it had enough staff to cover night shifts during the crisis.

Nigel Casey - the PM's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan - says night shifts were introduced from 14 August onwards and that there was an "element of compulsion" when it came to getting staff.

Kearns says she has been told people did not turn up for the shifts.

Casey promises to check that and come back to her.

The MP replies she is disappointed he can't confirm that every night shift was staffed.

Sir Philip says he does not believe there was a lack of urgency and instead says issues arose because of the scale of the challenge.

Asked by Tory MP Bob Seely about claims staff were told to keep to eight-hour shifts and maintain a work-life balance during the crisis, Sir Philip says he simply does not recognise that and that the claims are a result of "misunderstanding".

"In terms of the eight hours, in a full-blown crisis, we have an eight-hour shift system," he says, to ensure people have adequate rest, and that three shifts worked over a 24-hour period.

Sir Philip denies this was about "work-life balance" and instead about trying to ensure people did not burn out in a crisis.

Asked by Tory MP Bob Seely about the testimony of Foreign Office whistleblower Raphael Marshall, Sir Philip Barton repeats again that a review of the Afghan crisis operation did not find breaches of the Civil Service code of conduct.

Sir Philip says the team received 180,000 pieces of correspondence in August and 19,000 on the peak day - "it was a very, very high volume".

He says getting people onto flights was prioritised, rather than replying to each piece of correspondence.

Sir Philip says he appreciates that means many MPs did not receive responses during the height of the evacuation.

The volumes "were incredibly difficult to handle" and that more capability in call handling has since been put in place.

The SNP's Stewart McDonald asks when then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab went on holiday.

Sir Philip replies that Mr Raab has already dealt with that.

The SNP MP says this isn't true and accuses Mr Raab of having not given a full answer.

Sir Philip says he doesn't have the date in front of him and won't speak for Mr Raab.

McDonald keeps pressing on the subject, but doesn't get an answer.

"It is not enough to say Mea Culpa," Conservative MP Alicia Kearns tells Sir Philip.

She asks how he did not not consider returning home from holiday.

Sir Philip repeats his earlier assertion that if he had his time again he would have returned home earlier.

She then asks about the whistleblower, Raphael Marshall, who submitted evidence of chaos during the evacuation.

Sir Philip says he spoke with Marshall and subsequently appointed a senior civil servant to examine the claims.

He says the official found "no evidence that the civil service code had been breached" and acknowledged staff were operating under huge pressure.

Did those who stepped up in your absence fail, she asks.

"No," he replies.

The head of the Diplomatic Service and the top civil servant at the Foreign Office has said he regrets not returning from annual leave sooner during the Afghan crisis.

Sir Philip Barton tells the committee: "I have reflected a lot since August on my leave and if I had my time again I would have come back from my leave earlier than I did."

He says he had cover in place in the normal way and he stayed in touch all the way through the period. He returned on 26 August and says he was "partly in the United Kingdom and partly not".

Then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was also on leave at the time but returned by 16 August.

Nigel Casey says he informed then-Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab on 11 August that the UK needed to downsize and move its embassy operation towards Kabul airport, a recommendation Raab "immediately accepted".

Casey says that it became clear by 11 August that the UK could not keep its staff safe inside the embassy Green Zone.

The number of UK staff was reduced from 75 to 20 at around this time, Sir Philip Barton, the top Foreign Office civil servant adds.

Bristow recalls the fall of Kandahar and the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif as key moments in the march of the Taliban towards Kabul.

He says that, around the 13 and 14 August, the UK and US military said "this is falling apart now".

He says former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's "disappearance" was the final sign the Taliban would succeed.

The presidential palace was seized on 15 August.

Tugendhat asks about what contact Sir Laurie had with colleagues in Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

The diplomat says he was in regular contact with high commissioners and adds that he also connected with the Pakistani military to "try to find a way into a military stalemate" as the Taliban advanced.

He says Sir Laurie did not have contact with the Taliban before it seized power, but the PM's aide on Afghanistan Nigel Casey confirms the UK government did have contact with the Taliban and had done so "for many years".

Casey says the conversations since May 2021 were about pushing the Taliban towards a "power-sharing agreement" adding there was a clear warning of consequences should the Taliban "take power by any other means".

This included the withdrawal of the British embassy, he adds.

Asked by committee chair Tom Tugendhat whether he agreed with the assertion that the UK failed to think through the impact of withdrawal on those who helped promote the values that would be at risk under the Taliban, Sir Laurie says "no".

He says the collapse of the Afghan state and the return of the Taliban was assessed for its risk to those who worked with Western powers, such as women judges.

"It was not a given that the end would come in the way that it came or the time that it came," the former UK ambassador to Afghanistan says.

Challenged on this, Sir Laurie adds: "The way I would describe it in the last week to 10 days was a cascading collapse."

There were efforts going on in the final day or so to "manage a softer landing" for the Taliban to essentially hold short from Kabul, he says, "but that, on the day, is not the way it worked out".

The committee chair now asks if the Foreign Office took steps to speed up the evacuation plans, when it became clear the speed of the Taliban's advance.

"I was pushing from Kabul to up the pace as far as the system could manage," says Laurie Bristow, who became ambassador to Afghanistan in June.

He says the number of people who would seek help to leave the country was "always a known unknown".

"We did not know how many people would come through on the day for evacuation, we did not know how many British passport holders were in Afghanistan at any one time.

"We did know there would be a surge," he adds.

Image source, FCDO

Sir Laurie Bristow, who is speaking now, had been British ambassador to Afghanistan for less than eight weeks when the Taliban seized Kabul in August.

He had been the COP26 regional ambassador to the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia before his posting to Afghanistan.

The career diplomat was praised for his bravery as he remained in Kabul with a core team of diplomatic staff to help Britons and eligible Afghans leave on UK flights.

His first foreign posting was in the early 1990s "more or less straight out of university" to Romania, he told the University Consortium, external.

Tom Tugendhat asks when the government realised a large evacuation would be likely.

Nigel Casey says that in April, the government estimated there were 3,000 British passport holders still in Afghanistan and 4,000 people eligible for the resettlement programme who would need help.

He says at that point the plan was to get those people out ahead of any Taliban takeover.

Tugendhat asks if they are surprised by the figures, given to the committee by the whistleblower, that there were over 75,000 people in Afghanistan who sought refuge in the UK.

Philip Barton says he doesn't recognise those "very large numbers".

Image source, UK Government

Nigel Casey, a diplomat serving as the prime minister's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan since May this year, is giving evidence by video link.

He was previously the British Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the PM's private secretary on foreign affairs.

Beginning his career in 1991, he has also been posted to Pretoria, Washington D.C, Moscow and New Delhi.

Tory MP and committee chair Tom Tugendhat opens the session by asking the witnesses if they would describe the evacuation from Afghanistan as a success.

Top Foreign Office official Philip Barton says no-one wanted the UK's engagement in the country "to end the way it did".

He says the Taliban takeover was "the most likely outcome" of international troops withdrawing from Afghanistan.

However, he adds that no-one predicted the speed at which that would happen.

It was one of the most complex challenges the government has had to face, he tells the committee.

11 August: Afghan forces begin to surrender to the Taliban as US officials are quoted as saying Afghanistan could fall within 90 days

15 August: An estimated 17,600 people fleeing the Taliban arrive in Kabul, with thousands more arriving all the time, according to the UN

16 August: There are chaotic scenes at Kabul airport, where a number of people die and large crowds on the runway lead all flights to be halted for several hours

18 August: Kabul airport appears to be secured by US and Nato troops but the scramble to leave Afghanistan leads to chaotic scenes outside the airport's perimeter

22 August: Sir Laurie Bristow, the UK's ambassador to Afghanistan, describes the evacuation as "gathering pace" - confirming 6,000 Britons and eligible Afghans flown out since 13 August

23 August: UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace says the final UK evacuation flights are "hours not weeks" away

25 August: The UK Foreign Office issues new guidance for Britons and eligible Afghans to move away from Kabul airport "to a safe location and await further advice"

26 August: At least 95 people are killed - including 13 US service personnel - and 150 others wounded after an explosion near the Abbey Gate entrance to the airfield

27 August: The Ministry of Defence confirms animal shelter founder Paul "Pen" Farthing and his animals have made it through Kabul airport's checkpoints - the department said members of the UK Armed Forces assisted

Speaking later that day, Mr Johnson says he feels a "great sense of regret" about those left behind in Afghanistan

28 August: The UK Ministry of Defence says the UK's final evacuation flight purely for civilians has left Kabul

Image source, UK Government

We're hearing first from Sir Philip Barton, the most senior civil servant in the UK Foreign Office.

Prior to joining the FCDO as Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Philip was British High Commissioner to India between June and August 2020 and, before that, Director General at the Cabinet Office.

A career civil servant, Sir Philip began his journey through Whitehall at the Foreign Office in 1986.

Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, spoke of the anger, grief and rage felt by veterans at the "abandonment" of Afghanistan earlier this year.

The former soldier made an emotional speech in the House of Commons, after it was recalled in August, that silenced MPs.

The seven minute speech, described as a "defining" moment by the Spectator magazine, included criticism of US President Joe Biden.

Tugendhat said of US troops: "To see their Commander in Chief call into question the courage of the men I fought with, to claim that they ran. Shameful. Those who have never fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have."

The MP for Tonbridge and Melling has been in the Commons since May 2015.

Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat begins his questioning of government officials.

Stick with us for all the updates from the session.