Private details about greater than 33,000 Afghans searching for relocation to the UK after the Taliban takeover was launched in error by a defence official – and the Ministry of Defence tried for almost two years to cowl up the leak and its penalties.
Fears that the people named can be in danger from reprisals from the Taliban led the earlier authorities to arrange a secret relocation scheme, the Afghan Response Route (ARR), involving 20,000 folks at a value within the order of £2bn.
At midday on Tuesday, the excessive court docket choose Mr Justice Chamberlain introduced {that a} superinjunction first obtained by the MoD in August 2023 can be lifted, permitting the leak and secret relocation scheme to be reported for the primary time.
In his ruling, Chamberlain described the price of the plans as amounting to “the sort of money which makes a material difference to government spending plans and is normally the stuff of political debate”.
The dataset contained private info of about 33,000 Afghans who had utilized for one among two schemes run to permit individuals who had labored with the UK in Afghanistan to return to Britain with their households.
It was launched in error by an official and subsequently revealed on a Fb web page. When that got here to the eye of the MoD, the division first utilized for a superinjuction in September 2023, stopping its disclosure and reporting about it.
The presiding choose mentioned on Tuesday that he had determined at first to take care of the superinjunction at a listening to in November 2023 as a result of he had been informed by the MoD that if the Taliban turned conscious of the existence of the leaked knowledge and obtained it, “many thousands” of these listed “could be killed or injured”.
Nonetheless, at a listening to final month the choose acquired a duplicate of a assessment undertaken by a retired civil servant, Paul Rimmer, on behalf of the federal government assessing the relocation scheme, which led to Tuesday’s ruling.
Rimmer’s report concluded that the acquisition of the dataset by the Taliban was “unlikely to substantially change an individual’s existing exposure given the volume of data already available”. It was unlikely, Rimmer mentioned, that “merely being on the dataset would be grounds for targeting”.
Chamberlain mentioned the conclusions of that report “fundamentally undermine the evidential basis” on which he and the court docket of enchantment in separate hearings had relied to resolve that the MoD superinjunction needs to be upheld.
Labour has now determined to halt the Afghan Response Route, which has up to now price £400m and can price an extra £450m. Stopping it would save an extra £1.2bn, it’s understood.
The defence secretary, John Healey, provided a “sincere apology” for the information breach. In a press release to the Commons, he mentioned he had felt “deeply concerned about the lack of transparency” across the knowledge breach and “deeply uncomfortable to be constrained from reporting to this house”.
Healey mentioned: “Members of this house, including you, Mr Speaker, and myself, have been subject to this superinjunction. It is unprecedented, and to be clear, the court has always recognised the parliamentary privilege of proceedings in this house, and ministers decided not to tell parliamentarians at an earlier stage about the data incident as the widespread publicity would increase the risk of the Taliban obtaining the dataset.”
Healey mentioned the leaked spreadsheet additionally included particulars of MPs, senior army officers and authorities officers.
He mentioned: “This official mistakenly believed that they were sending the names of 150 applicants. However, the spreadsheet in fact contained personal information associated to 18,714 Afghans who had applied either to the ex gratia or the Arap [Afghan relocations and assistance policy] scheme on or before the 7th of January 2022.
“It contained names and contact details of applicants and in some instances information relating to applicants’ family members. And, in a small number of cases, the names of members of parliament, senior military officers and government officials who were noted as supporting the application. This was a serious departmental error.”
He added: “To date, 900 ARR principals are in Britain or in transit, together with 3,600 family members, at a cost of around £400m.”
Healey mentioned it had not been doable to contact each particular person within the dataset as a result of its incomplete and out-of-date info. “However, anyone who may be concerned can head to our new dedicated gov.uk website, wherein they will find more information about the data loss, further security advice, a self-checker tool which will inform them whether their application has been affected, and contact steps for the detailed information services centre, which the MoD has established.”
The minister mentioned 36,000 Afghans had been accepted by Britain on account of numerous schemes after the autumn of Kabul. The Arap scheme has now been closed.
“From today, there will be no new ARR offers of relocation to Britain, the route is now closed,” he mentioned. “However, we will honour the 600 invitations already made to any named person still in Afghanistan and their immediate family. When this nation makes a promise, we should keep it.”
In the summertime of 2021, the US determined to steer a withdrawal of western forces from Afghanistan, permitting the Taliban to takeover in August. That left tens of hundreds of people that had helped the UK and different international locations throughout twenty years of western army presence within the nation prone to reprisals.
