Prime Minister condemns previous government over £850 million cover-up affecting nearly 20,000 Afghans
Sir Keir Starmer has launched a scathing attack on the Conservative Party over its handling of a major data breach that exposed thousands of Afghans to Taliban reprisals, condemning the “full extent of the failing” his government inherited.
Speaking in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the Prime Minister revealed the extraordinary lengths to which the previous government went to conceal the breach, including obtaining an unprecedented super-injunction and establishing a secret resettlement route costing hundreds of millions of pounds.
There has always been support across this House of the United Kingdom fulfilling our obligations to Afghans who served alongside British forces,” Starmer told MPs. We warned in opposition about Conservative management of this policy and yesterday the Defence Secretary set out the full extent of the failing that we inherited.
The Prime Minister listed the catalogue of failures: “A major data breach. A super-injunction. A secret route that has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Ministers who served under the party opposite have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen.
The scandal centres on a catastrophic security breach in February 2022, when a Ministry of Defence official mistakenly emailed a spreadsheet containing personal details of 18,714 Afghan nationals outside government systems. The data included names, contact details and family information of those who had applied for relocation to Britain.
Defence Secretary John Healey revealed on Tuesday that the breach had led to the creation of a secret Afghan Relocation Route scheme, with approximately 6,900 people expected to be relocated at a projected cost of £850 million. Some 4,500 Afghans have already arrived or are in transit.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch conspicuously avoided addressing the Afghan scandal during Prime Minister’s Questions, instead focusing on other matters. Her silence on the issue drew criticism from opposition MPs who questioned the Tories‘ accountability.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey offered his party’s support for a potential inquiry into the scandal. He will have our support if he decides to pursue a public inquiry,” Davey told the Prime Minister, signalling cross-party concern about the handling of the breach.
The data breach remained hidden from public view for nearly two years under an extraordinary super-injunction granted in September 2023. The legal order not only prevented reporting of the breach but also banned disclosure of the injunction’s existence, creating what judges described as a “scrutiny vacuum.
High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain, who lifted the injunction on Tuesday, criticised the unprecedented nature of the order, stating: “This super-injunction had the effect of completely shutting down the ordinary mechanisms of accountability which operate in a democracy.
The previous Conservative government only became aware of the breach in August 2023 – 18 months after it occurred – when excerpts appeared on Facebook. By then, thousands of Afghans who had helped British forces were potentially at risk of Taliban retribution.
An internal government document from February this year suggested total costs could rise to £7 billion, though the MoD disputes this figure. The department has already been fined £350,000 for a separate data breach involving Afghan interpreters in 2021.
Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who applied for the super-injunction, has yet to comment on his role in the scandal. The Information Commissioner’s Office described the breach as a “deeply regrettable incident that placed thousands of vulnerable people at risk.
Labour ministers, including Healey, were only informed of the breach upon taking office after the general election. Healey expressed being “deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to parliament and the public” during his Commons statement.
The revelation has sparked calls for greater accountability, with eight media organisations having been served with injunctions preventing reporting during the cover-up period. Journalists described the gagging order as raising serious concerns about press freedom and democratic oversight.
Downing Street declined to confirm whether the unnamed official responsible for the breach faced disciplinary action. Legal firm Barings Law, representing around 1,000 affected Afghans, accused the MoD of attempting to “hide the truth from the public.
The scandal adds to a growing list of data protection failures by the MoD. In December 2023, the department was fined for accidentally sharing details of 265 Afghan interpreters in an email error, which the Information Commissioner called “egregious and potentially life-threatening.”
Despite closing the secret resettlement route, the government has pledged to honour approximately 600 outstanding invitations to Afghans still awaiting relocation. This comes as Britain faces tight public finances and rising anti-immigration sentiment.
The Prime Minister’s forceful condemnation of Conservative handling of the crisis marks a significant political moment, with Labour seeking to draw clear distinctions between their approach to transparency and that of their predecessors.
As questions mount about the true cost and scale of the cover-up, pressure is growing for a full public inquiry into how such a catastrophic breach could occur and why it was hidden from Parliament and the public for so long.
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Prime Minister’s Questions, 11 September 2024 – Image by UK Parliament, licensed under CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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