Afghan asylum seekers will be allowed to flee to Britain without a passport

"Today I'll be speaking to Priti Patel about how we can deal with Afghan passports. Right up until the day before yesterday, the Afghans wouldn't let Afghans leave without their passport.

If they've already been through our checks, we know who they are, we need to see if we can make sure that we adapt the rules to get those people out as soon as we can. We will cycle them out from Afghanistan to a Middle East country and then back to the United Kingdom so we can keep the flow of aeroplanes, in and out."

The Government is hoping to evacuate between 1,200 and 1,500 people per day in a major airlift operation from Kabul airport, which is still under the control of Western forces.

Officials have been in contact with the Taliban via an intermediary country in the Middle East, and have received assurances that embassy staff can be evacuated safely from Kabul since the fall of the city over the weekend.

British officials who remain in Kabul have relocated to the airport, and the evacuation operation should be complete by August 31.

Dramatic footage of a helicopter evacuating US diplomatic staff from Kabul has been compared to infamous photographs of overloaded aircraft leaving Saigon in 1975.