UK civil servants saw it as their job to protect ministers rather than to serve the public, Josie Stewart claims

A woman dismissed by the Foreign Office after whistle-blowing on the government’s much-criticised response to the fall of Kabul has claimed she witnessed “devastating failings”, a judge has been told.

Josie Stewart was a senior official at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office when she lost her job after giving an interview to the BBC in which she spoke about her “traumatic experiences” working in the FCDO Afghanistan Crisis Centre in summer 2021.

In a test for protections for whistleblowers, she has launched a legal case against the government, challenging her dismissal after she spoke anonymously to the BBC only for her identity to be revealed when her unredacted emails were accidentally posted on social media.

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The case will decide the extent of the rights of civil servants to make public interest disclosures to the press when “misleading claims” from ministers and civil servants are made to Parliament and the media, according to Ms Stewart’s lawyers.

In a hearing ahead of the tribunal, the FCDO applied to strike out parts of Ms Stewart’s witness statement concerning evidence given to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee about the evacuation from Afghanistan and the role of senior figures in those efforts and accompanying comments about the truthfulness of that evidence.

Ms Stewart’s final witness statement was referred to...

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