THE government said today that it “regrets” the time taken to establish the decision-making process which led to the controversial effort to evacuate animal welfare charity staff from Afghanistan.

The Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said an “error” in internal communication led some of its staff to believe Prime Minister Boris Johnson had given an order to prioritise Nowzad employees ahead of others for evacuation when the Taliban took control of the country.

Ministers and officials gave evidence to a cross-party group of MPs in “good faith” and at “no stage” intended to be “deliberately” misleading, the FCDO said.

Downing Street previously denied Mr Johnson was involved in prioritising the exit of staff with Nowzad, an animal welfare charity founded by former Royal Marine Pen Farthing, from Afghanistan.

The foreign affairs committee report from earlier this year said that “multiple senior officials” believed Mr Johnson had ordered their evacuation and “we have yet to be offered a plausible alternative explanation.”

It added that the charity workers were called for evacuation “at the last minute,” despite not meeting the prioritisation criteria of the Foreign Office “after a mysterious intervention from elsewhere in government.”

“The government regrets that it took as long as it did to establish what the decision-making process had been in this case, and how the decision was communicated internally to FCDO staff,” the FCDO said today.

“It agrees that, in this particular case, more care should have been taken within the FCDO in how the decision was communicated to staff.”

The Nowzad staff eventually left Afghanistan via Pakistan rather than flying out of Kabul by plane.

But the charity’s animals left on a charter flight with Mr Farthing, which the MPs said consumed “significant resources” during the crisis.

Labour MP and committee member Chris Bryant said the response from the FCDO did not “clarify or explain the inconsistencies in their statements to the committee.

“Our report called on the political and diplomatic leadership of the Foreign Office to make a fresh start and recommit to transparency and positive engagement with Parliament after this experience,” he said.

“Judging by the continuing evasions in this response, they are not listening.

“So far we have had few signs that the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office are able to learn valuable lessons from this experience.”