Foreign Office officials say it is difficult to judge whether Afghans who have worked on UK-funded civilian programs such as the British Council are actually at risk from the Taliban, saying the evidence is that the threat mainly affects those who provided security support in the United Kingdom. Officials said the slow progress in processing cases this year was caused by the large number of rejected applications, as well as legal cases challenging UK refusals to grant residency. So far, only 5,000 Afghans have been given permission to come to the UK, on ​​top of the 15,000 who were evacuated at the time of the fall of Kabul last year. The Guardian has obtained details from individual Afghans who used to work for UK-funded NGOs now fearing for their lives in underground shelters. They say family members have already been executed because of their UK links, but have been unable to get a response from the Home Office. But in its official response, published on Friday, to a scathing foreign affairs committee report published in May on the Afghanistan evacuation, the Foreign Office said: “If the Government were obliged to offer extreme resettlement in the UK to anyone working in programs it funded in vulnerable states where there was a risk of evacuation, which could seriously hamper funding to NGOs providing vital development programming.” The Foreign Office admitted to the foreign affairs select committee that the “special case” evacuation scheme, for Afghans who supported the UK effort without being directly employed by the UK government, had “many shortcomings” and was “poorly communicated” and that the priority of cases was “far from perfect”. The response said there were “staff gaps in some groups for some periods” during the evacuation and that “the impact of the crisis on staff welfare was significant”. The officials denied they intended to mislead the committee with evidence about lobbying for staff from an animal charity, Nowzad, to be included in the British airlift. He insisted that “at no stage did ministers or officials attempt to deliberately mislead the committee”, adding: “The FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office] wishes to reiterate the sincere apologies given verbally and in writing by officials for inadvertently providing misleading information on this matter. The Government regrets that it has taken so long to establish what the decision-making process was in this case and how the decision was communicated internally to FCDO staff. The government again acknowledges that the manner in which the decision was taken to call Nowzad’s staff for evacuation was exceptional.” The select committee had in its report called on the permanent secretary, Sir Philip Barton, to consider his position after it emerged that he was on holiday at the time of the fall of Kabul. He said he regretted not returning to work sooner, and in its official response the Foreign Office admitted it needed to improve its worst-case scenario planning, as at no point was such a rapid fall of Kabul from the Taliban considered. The Foreign Office declined to disclose detailed intelligence estimates to the committee. The officials also admitted that the UK was unable to influence the US to change its decision to withdraw its troops, so it had to work within the parameters set by the US. In its written response it said that “the government was under no illusions about the chances of success but wanted to do everything possible to try to prevent the kind of outcome that ultimately followed”. British officials attended a meeting with the Taliban in Tashkent in Uzbekistan earlier this week, along with around 30 other countries involved in Afghanistan. The UK has been struck by the absence of voices calling for recognition of the Taliban, due to the lack of a pluralist government that respects women’s rights. In its response to the select committee, the Foreign Office said it supported US opposition to the release of billions of dollars of Afghan central bank assets currently frozen in the US. It said there are “currently significant risks in facilitating the flow of reserves held abroad, arising from the Taliban’s appointments to central bank leadership positions of unskilled and UN-approved personnel, the loss of experienced central bank personnel and the uncertainty surrounding the implementation of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing controls by the central bank.”