The civil service is supposed to bring expertise in how to get things done. “It threatens the impartiality of the civil service. Those who resisted either found themselves buried somewhere or looking for jobs elsewhere. “Essentially people who said ‘yes’ and went along with it and bought into this shift in culture and approach were those whose careers went well. It was almost as if their first loyalty to their political leaders rather than to the public,” she said. “I increasingly saw senior officials interpreting their role as doing what ministers say and providing protections to ministers. Stewart, 42, who now works for the organisation Transparency International, claimed that the civil service had been dangerously politicised since the Boris Johnson era and accused the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, of failing to stand up for officials. Is what they’re going to do likely to be legally protected or not? If they don’t know then I’m not sure how meaningful the fact the law exists is,” she said. “If the law is not tested and used then I don’t know how much it actually means as potential whistleblowers don’t know which side of the line it is going to fall. Her case, which gets its final hearing in September this year, will establish a precedent for how the courts handle similar ones in future, clarifying whether whistleblowers can avoid dismissal if they have disclosed information in “exceptionally serious circumstances” and it is therefore viewed as “reasonable” to have done so. She suggested that ministers had not expected the public to care about evacuating locals who had helped the British. Stewart, who worked for the FCDO for seven years, including two at the British embassy in Kabul, volunteered to work in the Whitehall crisis centre when the Taliban took over. He was criticised for failing to return home from holiday in August 2021 when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. Her intervention will increase the pressure on Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary at the time, who is currently fighting for his political career over bullying allegations, which he has denied. In her first interview since she lost her job, she said that the government’s Afghan withdrawal strategy had been shaped by political concerns back home, with ministers more focused on media coverage and “the political fallout” than saving lives. Stewart, who was head of illicit finance at the department, is challenging her dismissal with the Public Interest Disclosure Act after she was sacked for giving an anonymous interview to the BBC about the government’s handling of the chaotic Afghan withdrawal. Thousands of Afghan journalists, translators, interpreters and fixers have been providing invaluable information from the ground to international media organizations since the 2001 US-led invasion.The former senior official at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is now taking the government to court to test legal protections for whistleblowers amid concerns they are not sufficient to protect civil servants who share sensitive information in the public interest. Siddiqui was working that week as a journalist with the Afghan security forces when he was caught and killed in Taliban crossfire. Only a few weeks ago, Reuters journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed while covering the clashes between Afghan security forces and Taliban forces near a border crossing with Pakistan. Since the Taliban gained large swaths of territory in the past few months, many journalists in Afghanistan have gone into hiding. Jen Wilson, chief operating officer of Army Week Association in New York, said: “(The Taliban) like it when American TV journalists are on the ground because then they get to speak to the West, but they hate indigenous journalists, especially ones that were in bed with allied forces.” The former BBC reporter, an Afghan national, is said to be a “high-value target” for the Taliban, and the group reportedly went to their home last Tuesday to kill them. “All the relevant expertise and resources across the BBC and with external parties are currently dedicated to this task,” he added. LONDON: An Afghan reporter who has been working with the BBC for many years is being actively targeted by the Taliban and is currently trapped in Kabul unable to reach the airport.Ī BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC is doing everything it can to secure the safety of our teams in Afghanistan.
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