Boris Johnson "authorised" for staff and animals at Pen Farthing's Nowzad charity "to be evacuated" from Afghanistan, a ministerial official has said, despite the Prime Minister branding suggestions that he intervened "complete nonsense".

       In written evidence published on Wednesday by the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, an official working in Lord Goldsmith's office said the "PM has just authorised" Nowzad "staff and animals to be evacuated".

       The evidence shows that the official emailed colleagues working on the "special cases team Bronze", saying that other animal welfare charities were also looking for assistance after Nowzad had been approved for evacuation.

       The official wrote on Aug 25: "(Name redacted) are a (details redacted) animal charity operating in Kabul and seeking to evacuate their (details redacted) members of staff (no animals).

       "Equivalent charity Nowzad, run by an ex-Royal Marine, has received a lot of publicity and the PM has just authorised their staff and animals to be evacuated, (animal charity - name redacted) are hoping to be treated in the same capacity."

       Mr Johnson, asked by reporters on Dec 7 if he had intervened in the evacuation last summer, called the suggestion "complete nonsense".

       Downing Street distanced Mr Johnson from involvement in the decision on evacuating the Nowzad animals, when asked about the claims on Wednesday.

       The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "It remains the case that the Prime Minister didn't instruct officials to take any particular course of action."

       But Dominic Dyer, who led the political lobbying campaign from the UK for Nowzad to be evacuated, said Mr Johnson's refusal to acknowledge his role in the evacuation had "tarnished" the campaign.

       Mr Dyer said the emails published by the committee "vindicated" what he had previously said and argued that the Prime Minister could be "very proud of giving support to this as a humanitarian rescue mission".

       "I'm not certain why he didn't feel he could explain his involvement in August at the end of this operation," he said.

       "I don't know why, and I don't know why this was allowed to turn into such a big political football, for the Ministry of Defence to fall out with the Foreign Office and for Downing Street to say it had no role in it.

       "It has tarnished what has been a very important operation that had huge public support, and I think that's a sad indictment of our political system at the moment, which the Prime Minister presides over, to be quite frank."

       In response to the latest evidence, John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, accused Mr Johnson of "lying" about his hand in the evacuation.

       "Once again, the Prime Minister has been caught out lying about what he has been doing and deciding," he said.

       "He should never have given priority to flying animals out of Afghanistan while Afghans who worked for our armed forces were left behind.

       "In this case, (as) people were fleeing in terror as the Taliban took over Kabul and British forces were putting their lives at risk, the Prime Minister was once again prioritising the wrong things and making the wrong calls.

       "We need to know why the Prime Minister overruled the Defence Secretary with this decision."

       Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokeswoman, called for Mr Johnson to "immediately make a public statement to correct the record and for once tell the truth".

       Mr Farthing arrived in the UK along with over 170 cats and dogs via a privately-funded charter flight on Aug 31.

       The former Royal Marine, who had been one of the last British civilians to leave Kabul, later had to apologise for an expletive-filled message to Peter Quentin, a special adviser working for Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary.