Afghan data leak scandal leaves 'serious questions' for Tories, Keir Starmer says

Keir Starmer has said Tories have "serious questions to answer" about a shocking data leak put tens of thousands of Afghan lives at risk.

The Prime Minister hit out over the "major data breach" after details of almost 19,000 people seeking to flee after the Taliban were released by a Ministry of Defence (MOD) official. It led to a secret £850million relocation scheme being set up to bring people to safety.

On Tuesday a super-injunction which meant the scandal and its consequences were hidden from the public was lifted. Ex-Tory minister Johnny Mercer said it was the "most hapless display of incompetence" he had seen in Government and said he was "ashamed" of the MOD.

An Afghan man who worked for the British military, told Sky News he felt betrayed and has "completely lost (his) mind" after his identity was part of the massive data breach. The man, who has not been named, said: "I have done everything for the British forces ... I regret that - why (did) I put my family in danger because of that? Is this justice?"

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Speaking at PMQs, Mr Starmer said: "We warned in opposition about Conservative management of this policy and yesterday, the Defence Secretary set out the full extent of the failings that we inherited: a major data breach, a superinjunction, 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."

Former Tory veterans minister Mr Mercer, who lost his seat last year, wrote in The Telegraph that the incident shed light on "the true scale of the ineptitude of the British state". He said: "Even after the loss of 457 British personnel, and the billions of pounds it cost to prosecute, the war in Afghanistan reveals yet another cataclysmic skeleton in the cupboard when it comes to how we have treated our Afghan allies.

"It is mind-boggling that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) could email a spreadsheet of all those with ties to the British state to an Afghan national, over the internet, to post on Facebook for the Taliban to see." He said he was "furious, sad and bitter" about the failure.

Tory former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace said he makes "no apology" for applying for the initial injunction and insisted it was "not a cover-up" but was motivated by the need to protect people in Afghanistan whose safety was at risk.

A dataset of 18,714 who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) was released in February 2022 by a defence official who emailed a file outside authorised government systems. The MOD only became aware of the blunder when excerpts from the dataset were posted anonymously on a Facebook group in August 2023.

A superinjunction was granted at the High Court in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from finding out about the leak. Defence Secretary John Healey said he was not going to "lead a witch hunt after a defence official".

"This is much bigger than the mistake of an individual," he told the BBC. Asked why it had taken so long to lift the super-injunction, Mr Healey said: "Because we came into government a year ago and we had to sort out a situation which we'd not had access to dealing with before.

"So that meant getting on top of the risks, the intelligence assessments, the policy complexities, the court papers and the range of Afghan relocation schemes the previous government had put in place. And it also meant taking decisions that no one takes lightly because lives may be at stake.

"And in the end, we were able to do this because I commissioned an independent review, which I published yesterday as well from Paul Rimmer that took a fresh look at the circumstances in Afghanistan now, four years on from the Taliban taking control, and the important thing it said was that it is highly unlikely that being a name on this dataset that was lost three-and-a-half years ago increases the risk of being targeted."

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