Afghanistan

12:40:00

With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on a significant data protection breach from February 2022 relating to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy. It led to the High Court granting an unprecedented super-injunction and the previous Government establishing a secret Afghan resettlement route. Today I am announcing to the House a change in Government policy. I am closing that resettlement route, disclosing the data loss, and confirming that the Court order was lifted at 12 noon today. Members of this House—including you, Mr Speaker, and me—have been subject to the super-injunction. It is unprecedented. To be clear, the Court has always recognised the parliamentary privilege of proceedings in this House, and Ministers decided not to tell parliamentarians about the data incident at an earlier stage, as the widespread publicity would increase the risk of the Taliban obtaining the dataset. However, as parliamentarians and as Ministers, it has been deeply uncomfortable to be constrained from reporting to this House. I am grateful to be able to disclose the details to Parliament today. I trust that you, Mr Speaker, and Members will bear with me if I take the time to ensure that the House now has the fullest information possible, as I discussed with you yesterday. The facts are as follows. In February 2022, 10 months after the then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, introduced the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and six months after the fall of Kabul, a Defence official emailed an ARAP case working file outside authorised Government systems. As the House knows, ARAP is the resettlement scheme that this country established for Afghan citizens who worked for, or with, our UK armed forces over the combat years in Afghanistan. Both in opposition and in government, Labour has backed that scheme, and ARAP has had full support from across this House. The official mistakenly believed that they were sending the names of 150 applicants. However, the spreadsheet in fact contained personal information associated with 18,714 Afghans who had applied to either the ex gratia scheme or the ARAP scheme on, or before, 7 January 2022. It contained names and contact details of applicants and, in some instances, information relating to applicants’ family members. In a small number of cases, the names of Members of Parliament, senior military officers and Government officials were noted as supporting the application. This was a serious departmental error. It was in clear breach of strict data protection protocols, and was one of many data losses relating to the ARAP scheme during this period. Ministers in the previous Government first became aware of the data loss in mid-August 2023, 18 months after the incident, when personal details of nine individuals from the dataset appeared online. Action was taken to ensure they were swiftly removed, an internal investigation was conducted, and the incident was reported to both the Metropolitan police and the Information Commissioner. The Met deemed that no criminal investigation was necessary, and the Information Commissioner has continued to work with the Department throughout. However, journalists were almost immediately aware of the breach, and the previous Administration applied to the High Court for an injunction to prevent the data loss becoming public. The judge deemed that the risk warranted going further and, on 1 September 2023, granted a super-injunction, which prevented disclosure of the very existence of the injunction. That super-injunction has been in place for nearly two years, during which time eight media organisations and their journalists were served to prohibit any reporting. No Government wish to withhold information from the British public, parliamentarians or the press in this manner. In autumn 2023, previous Ministers started work on establishing a new resettlement scheme specifically designed for people in the compromised dataset who were not eligible for ARAP but who were nevertheless judged to be at the highest risk of reprisals by the Taliban. It is known as the Afghanistan response route, or ARR. It was covered by the super-injunction. The then Government initially established the ARR to resettle a target cohort of around 200 principals, but in early 2024 a combination of Ministers’ decisions on the scheme’s policy design and the court’s views had broadened that category to nearly 3,000 principals. I want to provide assurance to the House and the British public that all individuals relocated under the Afghanistan response route, ARAP or the Home Office’s Afghan citizens resettlement scheme undergo strict national security checks before being able to enter our country. The full number of Afghan arrivals under all schemes has been reported in the regular Home Office statistics, meaning that they are already counted in existing migration figures. As shadow Defence Secretary, I was initially briefed on the ARR by James Heappey, the former Armed Forces Minister, on 12 December 2023, and issued with the super-injunction at the start of that meeting. Other members of the present Cabinet were only informed of the evidence of the data breach, the operation of the ARR, and the existence of the super-injunction on taking office after the general election. By that time, the ARR scheme was fully established and in operation, and it was nearly two and a half years since the data loss. I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to Parliament and to the public. I felt it only right to reassess the decision-making criteria for the ARR. We began, straightaway, to take a hard look at the policy complexities, costs, risks, court hearings and the range of Afghan relocation schemes being run by the previous Government. Cabinet colleagues endorsed the need for new insights in the autumn of last year, while the scheme kept running. In December 2024, I announced the streamlining of the range of Government schemes that we inherited into the Afghan resettlement programme to establish better value for money, a single set of time-limited entitlements and support to get Afghan families resettled. On behalf of the House, I sincerely thank our colleagues in local government, without whom this unified resettlement programme would simply not have been possible. At the beginning of this year, I commissioned Paul Rimmer, a former senior civil servant and ex-deputy chief of Defence Intelligence, to conduct an independent review. The review was concluded and reported to Ministers last month. Today I am releasing a public version of Rimmer’s review, and I am placing a copy of it in the Library of the House. I am very grateful to him for his work. Despite brutal human rights abuses in Afghanistan, the Rimmer review notes the passage of time—it is nearly four years since the fall of Kabul—and concludes: “There is little evidence of intent by the Taleban to conduct a campaign of retribution against” former officials. It also concludes that those who pose a challenge to the Taliban rule now are at greater risk of a reaction from the regime, and that “the wealth of data inherited from the former government” by the Taliban “would already enable them” to target individuals if they wished to do so, which means that it is “highly unlikely” that merely being on the spreadsheet “would be the…piece of information enabling or prompting the Taleban to act.” Rimmer is clear: he stresses the uncertainty in any judgments and does not rule out any risk. Yet he concludes that, given this updated context, the current policy that we inherited “appears an extremely significant intervention…to address the potentially limited net additional risk the incident likely presents.” The Rimmer review is a very significant element, but not the sole element, in the Government’s decision to change policy, to close the ARR and to ensure that the court order is lifted today. Policy concerns about proportionality, public accountability, cost and fairness were also important factors for the Government. This was not a decision taken lightly; it follows a lengthy process, including the Rimmer review, detailed ministerial discussions and repeated consultations with legal advisers. Just as I have changed Government policy in the light of the review, the High Court today, in the light of the review, ruled that there was no tenable basis for the continuation of the super-injunction. To date, 900 ARR principals are in Britain or in transit, together with 3,600 family members, at a cost of about £400 million. From today, there will be no new ARR offers of relocation to Britain. From today, the route is closed. However, we will honour the 600 invitations already made to any named persons still in Afghanistan and their immediate family. When this nation makes a promise, we should keep it. Today I am also restoring full accountability for the Government’s Afghan relocation schemes to Parliament, and I would expect our Select Committees now to hold us to account through in-depth inquiries. Let me turn to the practical action that we have taken as a result of this policy change and in preparation for the lifting of the court’s super-injunction. My first concern has been to notify as many people as possible who are affected by the data incident and to provide them with further advice. The Ministry of Defence has done that this morning, although it has not been possible to contact every individual on the dataset, owing to its incomplete and out-of-date information. Anyone who may be concerned can head to our new dedicated gov.uk website, where 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 that the MOD has established. This serious data incident should never have happened. It may have occurred three years ago, under the previous Government, but to all those whose information was compromised I offer a sincere apology today on behalf of the British Government, and I trust that the shadow Defence Secretary, as a former Defence Minister, will join me in that. To date, 36,000 Afghans have been accepted by Britain through the range of relocation schemes. Britain has honoured the duty we owe to those who worked and fought alongside our troops in Afghanistan. The British people have welcomed them to our country, and in turn, this is their chance to rebuild their lives, their chance to contribute to and share in the prosperity of our great country. However, none of these relocation schemes can carry on in perpetuity, nor were they conceived to do so. That is why we announced on 1 July that we would no longer accept new applicants to ARAP. However, I reiterate the commitment that we made then to processing every outstanding ARAP application and relocating those who might prove eligible, and we will complete our commitment to continuing the review of the Triples. I recognise that my statement will prompt many questions. I would have liked to settle these matters sooner, because full accountability to Parliament and freedom of the press matter deeply to me—they are fundamental to our British way of life. However, lives may have been at stake, and I have spent many hours thinking about this decision; thinking about the safety and the lives of people I will never meet, in a far-off land in which 457 of our servicemen and women lost their lives. So this weighs heavily on me, and it is why no Government could take such decisions lightly, without sound grounds and hard deliberations. During the last year we have conducted and now completed this work. I commend my statement to the House.

12:56:00

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and for receipt earlier this morning of a hard copy of the Rimmer review. I also thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Armed Forces for briefing me yesterday and other parliamentary colleagues today. Furthermore, given the nature of the super-injunction and the fact that the timing and nature of the statement relate entirely to the court’s lifting of that super-injunction, I recognise that it was entirely right for the Secretary of State to update the House at the earliest opportunity, and I welcome the opportunity that colleagues now have to scrutinise these matters. Let me begin by declaring an interest. I was a Defence Minister in August 2023, when the Department first became aware of the breach, my main role being to chair one meeting on the matter in August 2023 because I was the duty Minister. Thereafter, however, as Minister for Defence Procurement and with this sitting outside my portfolio, I had relatively minimal direct involvement. That said, the Secretary of State has issued an apology on behalf of the Government and I join him in that, and in recognising that this data leak should never have happened and was an unacceptable breach of all relevant data protocols. I also agree that it is right for an apology to be issued specifically to those whose data was compromised. It is nevertheless a fact that cannot be ignored that when this breach came to light, the immediate priority of the then Government was to avoid a very specific and terrible scenario: namely, an error on the part of an official of the British state leading to the torture, or even murder, of persons in the dataset at the hands of what remains a brutal Taliban regime. As the Rimmer review confirms, that scenario, thankfully, appears to have been avoided. Of course, we understand that the review was set up in January and reported to the Secretary of State in June. I want to be clear that it is entirely appropriate that the Secretary of State has sought to update the Department’s understanding of the threat on the ground in Afghanistan that exists today, particularly for those persons in the dataset who had previously been considered to be at the greatest risk of reprisals. However, the House will appreciate that when Ministers became aware of the data breach in August 2023, we did not have the luxury of six months in which to assess the situation. As Rimmer says in paragraph 53: “The review notes that the passage of time is particularly relevant.” I know that my former ministerial colleague—the former Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, who led the response to the leak—will have been focused entirely on what he saw as his duty of care to those at risk of reprisals, based on the threat assessment that pertained at the time. However, any threat picture is constantly evolving, and as I say, I support the Secretary of State’s decision to review the MOD’s understanding of the threat. Given the latest situation, as reported by Rimmer, we support his conclusion that the Afghanistan response route can now be closed. Turning to the super-injunction, I entirely understand why this would be a subject of considerable interest, particularly to the newspapers and media outlets concerned. We have an independent judiciary, and it is not for me to comment either on the decision to grant the injunction in the first place or to lift it today, but it is surely telling that paragraph 56 of the Rimmer review states that planning at the time that the Government became aware of the breach in the summer of 2023 was based on a “risk judgement that were the Taleban to secure access to the dataset, the consequences for affected individuals may be serious.” Had that not been the case, no doubt the Court would have been less likely to grant the injunction, and certainly not a super-injunction. On the leak, can the Secretary of State confirm that it was by a civil servant, and that Ministers at the time took steps to change the casework procedure by not using spreadsheets sent by email, but moving to a more secure system fully within the entirely secure network? Can he confirm that, although the dataset was of about 18,000, only a relatively small portion were identified as at high risk of reprisals, and only a small number had been settled here, which is why, as he stated, the cost is about £400 million, not the £7 billion reported elsewhere? Now that these matters are rightly in the public domain and given the reassessment of the threat in the Rimmer review, I agree that it would be wholly appropriate for the Defence Committee and others to look further into these matters. Can the Secretary of State comment on one specific item being reported, which is that someone—I refer not to the person who made the leak, but another apparent third party who obtained some of the data—was engaged in blackmail? Did the original Metropolitan police investigation look at that, and if not, will he consider reopening it so that the police can look at that specific point, which has serious implications? Although we must recognise the huge role played by Afghan nationals in support of our armed forces, any policy in this area must always be balanced against our own national interest. We support the Government in closing the ARR scheme, as we did with their decision to close the full ARAP programme.

I welcome the tone in which the shadow Defence Secretary has responded, and I welcome his joining me in the apology on behalf of the British Government to those whose data has been compromised. I also welcome his acceptance that, as he put it, it was “entirely appropriate” for the Defence Secretary, as part of a new Government, to look to update the Department’s assessment of the threat. I am very pleased that, as the House will have noted, he supports Rimmer’s conclusions and my policy judgments that the Government have announced today. The shadow Defence Secretary is right that, in simple terms, Rimmer gives us a revised, up-to-date assessment of the risk—in particular, the risk to those individuals whose data may be on that spreadsheet. He does confirm that it is highly unlikely that their name being on the dataset increases the risk of their being targeted. The shadow Defence Secretary asked me three or four specific questions. He asked about the official—it was a defence official. I cannot account for the improvements in data handling that previous Ministers may have made, but when I did his job in opposition, this data leak was just one of many from the Afghan schemes. I can also say that, in the past year since the election, the Government have appointed a new chief information officer, installed new software to securely share data and completed a comprehensive review of the legacy Afghan data on the casework system. On the £7 billion figure, which I think the shadow Defence Secretary may have picked up from court papers, that was a previous estimate. It is related not simply to the Afghan response route but an estimate of the total cost of all Government Afghan schemes for the entire period in which they may operate. On the significance of today’s announcement and the policy decisions that we have taken compared with simply continuing the policy and schemes that we inherited, the taxpayer will pay £1.2 billion less over the period, about 9,500 fewer Afghans will come to this country and, above all, proper accountability in this House and proper freedom of the media are restored.

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Although I welcome it and his intent to inject parliamentary transparency and scrutiny, this whole data breach is a mess and wholly unacceptable. As I mentioned to the Minister for the Armed Forces during our recent secret briefing, I am minded to recommend to my Defence Committee colleagues that we thoroughly investigate it to ascertain what has transpired, given the serious ramifications on so many levels. As things stand, notwithstanding the contents of the Rimmer review, how confident is my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary that the Afghans affected, many of whom bravely supported our service personnel, will not be at risk of recriminations and reprisals?

I can only recommend that my hon. Friend reads in full the public version of the Rimmer report, which I have published today. Rimmer sets out conclusions and an updated risk assessment, taking an up-to-date view, recognising that the situation in Afghanistan is nearly four years on from the point at which the Taliban took control and that the present regime sees those who may threaten the regime itself as a greater threat to their operation than any former Government official or serving official. I recommend that my hon. Friend reads that report, and I expect that he, as the Defence Committee Chair, will want to take full advantage of this restored parliamentary accountability. I have always believed that our Select Committee system in this House is perfectly capable of, and better suited to, many of the in-depth inquiries that often get punted into public inquiries or calls for such inquiries. I hope he will have noted the fact that the shadow Defence Secretary also endorsed that view.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I thank the Minister for the Armed Forces for his briefing on this issue this morning. I am pleased this House now has the opportunity to scrutinise this alarming data breach. It was right that the then Government moved to introduce a new scheme to try to minimise the risk to the Afghan soldiers and their families caught up in this breach involving 18,714 individuals in total. It is the very least we owe them given the sacrifices they made to support our campaign in Afghanistan, and I welcome the apologies from both sides of the House as a result of this data breach. There are, however, serious questions raised about how this data breach was allowed to happen under the Conservatives’ watch, and the heightened level of risk it has created for the Afghans involved. What steps have been taken to address the root cause of the breach and ensure that it cannot happen again? Reporting by the Financial Times this afternoon suggests that an original relocation scheme considered for all 25,000 Afghan personnel could cost up to £7 billion. Will he confirm what assessment his Department has made of that figure, and why that was kept hidden from the public? The immediate priority must be to ensure the safety of all those individuals caught up in this breach, so what assurances can the Secretary of State provide that lifting the super-injunction does not heighten dangers for the individuals concerned? What steps is he taking to ensure that the individuals whose data was leaked are aware of the incident? What additional support is being provided to them directly now that the case is in the public domain? In the light of these developments, can he outline when the casework and final relocations under this and the ARAP scheme will be completed?

I welcome the hon. Lady’s response. I provided the answers to two or three of her questions directly to the shadow Defence Secretary. On the steps we have taken to ensure the reduced risk of data losses and data breaches in future, one can never say never but I am more confident that I was 12 months ago. I have also given a response on the £7 billion figure. The estimated full costs of all Afghan schemes that will run to their completion, from start to finish, because of the savings that will derive from the policy decisions we have taken today, will be between £5.5 billion and £6 billion. The cost of the ARR scheme to date—the cost and the sums committed to bring the 900 principals and their immediate families who are in Britain or in transit—is about £400 million. On those still to come, I expect the cost to be a similar sum. I think I said in my statement to the House that Rimmer recognises the uncertainties and the brutal nature of the Afghan Taliban regime. There can never be no risk in such judgments and decisions, and that is one reason that I and the Government have taken this decision with hard deliberation and serious intent. I hope the House will back it this afternoon.

I am grateful to the ministerial team for my early briefing, which gave me an opportunity to read a Foreign Affairs Committee report that came out—it was begun in September 2021—in 2022 under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat). It is called “Missing in action: UK leadership and the withdrawal from Afghanistan” and it was excoriating: “The manner of the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan was a disaster, a betrayal of our allies, and weakens the trust that helps to keep British people safe.” It said: “the Government should keep better records—securely held—on locally-employed staff”— we have heard that this is one of the many data losses from ARAP— “to ensure that any evacuation can be carried out more effectively. It should devise a policy, based on clear and fair principles, about the assistance that will be offered to local partners in the event of a security deterioration, and report to us when it has done so.” I hope that such a policy has been developed, that more lessons have been learnt and that Ministers will report to my Foreign Affairs Committee about where we are now.

I am sure Ministers will report to my right hon. Friend’s Committee if she invites us to do so. She is right to make the big argument that anyone providing data to the British Government has a right to expect that personal data to be stored securely, handled safely and not subject to the sort of loss or breach that we saw too often in the early days of the Afghan relocation schemes.

I call the Father of the House.

I commend the Secretary of State for his honesty and I agree with everything he says in his statement. What an appalling mess, but part of the original sin was our intervening militarily and then scuttling out. On a wider point, may I take it that we have learnt our lesson and have got over the liberal imperial itch of the Cameron and Blair eras to intervene militarily in ungovernable countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? Let us now move on, but I support what the Secretary of State said.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I am certainly grateful for his support for my statement this afternoon. Although he has not said it, he is a big champion of press freedom and I expect that he also recognises that an important part of our decision has been the period in which we have seen no public knowledge, no media reporting and no parliamentary accountability. We set that right today.

As a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, I was appalled to watch the chaotic mismanagement following the fall of Kabul that left Afghans who served alongside our troops and who worked so hard for a better Afghanistan, dangerously exposed. This was a situation that I feared would happen and could see coming even when I served in Afghanistan in 2017. The fact is that the previous Government had plenty of warning that that situation could happen and failed to plan properly for it. This data breach joins a litany of other data breaches, delays and failures of our allies. Does the Secretary of State agree that we must give our fullest support to those Afghans, so they can rebuild a new life in the UK?

I do indeed. I know from Afghan families who were relocated in the early days to my own constituency in South Yorkshire that it was the voices of Members on both sides of the House, speaking up in exactly the same terms as my hon. Friend just has and recognising the debt this country owes to many of those who worked alongside or served with our armed forces and who made possible in the first place the very difficult job that our forces undertook in Afghanistan, that provided a warm welcome, and they continue to do so. To those Afghans, we are offering a new home and a chance to rebuild their lives and contribute to our country.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the tone of voice with which he delivered it. I commanded the Scots Guards in 2010 in Afghanistan, at the high watermark of violence. I was very well served by Naz and Mukhtar, and I will always be grateful both to the Ministry of Defence for getting them to Britain and to the communities in this country who have welcomed them to their new lives here. I want to focus on a particular phrase the Secretary of State used. The shadow Secretary of State asked whether it was a civil servant who carried out the leak. The Secretary of State said it was a “Defence official” and The Times is reporting that it was a soldier. I think it is worth clarifying exactly whether it was a civil servant, a spad or a soldier, because conflating the term “Defence official” to cover members of the armed forces is something that might come back to bite the Secretary of State if he continues to do it.

This was a data breach that took place three and a half years ago under the decision and leadership of the previous Government and previous Defence Ministers. The challenge this Government faced was far bigger than the actions of one official that long ago. My full focus since the election in July last year has been to get to grips with the costs, the proportionality—or disproportionality—of the schemes in place, and the lack of accountability to Parliament, freedom of the press and public knowledge. It is that set of factors that has taken up my time and my attention.

I note that the shadow Secretary of State made great play of the changes and the extra safeguards that Ministers of the previous Government put in place following the breach. I also note that the Secretary of State said he had had to make more changes and introduce new software. That suggests to me that the changes put in place by the previous Government were not good enough. Can I ask him this clearly? Who had knowledge of this incident in the 18 months after the data breach had taken place before it reached Ministers? How were there no checks on anyone in the Department who had access to that sort of data to ensure they were using it properly?

My hon. Friend poses questions to me in the House this afternoon that I simply cannot answer. The events date from a period well before I took office. As he above all will appreciate, new Ministers have no access to the policy advice, the legal assessments, any of the papers or even the threat assessments that previous Government Ministers may have commissioned. I think that that subject is, if I may say so, proper material for the Defence Committee, on which he serves in such a distinguished way, to perhaps take a deeper look at and to call witnesses on who may be in a better position to answer those questions than I am this afternoon. Finally, my hon. Friend asked about software. I am afraid I am one of the last people to be able to give an authoritative view on the question of cyber-security and up-to-date software, but the nature of this work means that there is a constant requirement for new software and for updating. The fact that we have taken the steps in the past 12 months that our experts and I have regarded as necessary does not necessarily mean that the steps taken by previous Ministers were inadequate. What I can say, however, is that when I was the shadow Defence Secretary, we were aware of and exposed in opposition the building backlogs in casework, the regular data breaches and the broken promises that sadly too often characterised the Afghan relocation schemes, particularly in the early years.

I, too, welcome the statement given by the Secretary of State today. As a member of the Defence Committee, I look forward to giving this matter the scrutiny it deserves. I will not go into the detail of the report, but I think it is important to clarify, if the Secretary of State is able to do so, whether the data breach in question has in the past put or is now putting any serving members of the UK armed forces at risk?

I look forward to being called to give evidence to the hon. Gentleman’s Committee if it does launch such an inquiry. To the best of my knowledge and belief, no serving member of our armed forces is put at risk by the data loss.

It is staggering to hear of yet another serious data breach under the previous Conservative Government. Does the Secretary of State—[Interruption.] Conservative Members can bicker from their Benches, but it was clearly a mistake made when they were in power. Does the Secretary of State agree that we have inherited a chaotic and poorly managed system, and can he tell us what systems have been put in place to correct that? We must not see more systems with officials emailing an Excel spreadsheet—it absolutely beggars belief. Can he confirm that this will never happen again?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right in the criticism she levels. I would just say, however, that I do not think any Minister could stand here and guarantee that there will never be another data breach, data loss or data error in that way, in the same way that no chief executive of any organisation could say so. I can say that we have taken steps to reduce the risk of that happening and that we no longer do any casework on spreadsheets, which was the technology that was available in the early days of this scheme. That was part of the problem, I think, in the inadvertent mistake made by the Defence official.

What worries me more than the lifting of this super-injunction is the fact that we have closed down all the Afghan schemes at the very time that undocumented Afghans who felt it necessary to flee to Iran and Pakistan are being rounded up for forcible repatriation to an Afghanistan led by the Taliban. I understand that the investigation into our obligation to the Triples—the special forces that our forces trained—will continue, and I welcome that. Will the Secretary of State confirm that despite the closure of the schemes, anybody who is found to have worked closely with our armed forces and is in imminent danger can still be rescued and admitted to this country?

It is more than four years since the previous Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, launched on behalf of this country the Afghan relocations and assistance policy with the full support of this House. There has been ample time for anyone who could conceivably believe they might qualify to make their application. None of those schemes, including ARAP, was ever conceived or designed to last in perpetuity, which is why we closed them at the beginning of this month to any new applicants, and why I have taken the decision, based on Rimmer and the other factors I have identified, to end the ARR scheme today. On the ARAP applicants—the sort of Afghans whom the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about—we will complete any remaining applications that are in our system waiting to be processed. On the Triples, we will complete the second phase of the review that we have given a commitment to them and to this House to undertake.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s support for parliamentary transparency and for the work of the Committee corridor in this House. I have no doubt that my excellent colleagues who chair the various Committees that are responsible will do a thorough job of examining this matter, and I hope that the Secretary of State will facilitate the sharing of any information that may need to be handled in a sensitive manner. When Labour was last in government, there were a number of breaches of this nature; a predecessor of his asked to be notified of every one, and most were due to human error. It is great that we are updating the IT systems and dealing with the security, but could the Secretary of State touch on the measures that will be put in place to guard against the human error that will inevitably creep in?

For functions and roles like this, having sound, secure caseworker software, good training and proper protocols—all of which are now in place—greatly minimises the risk that anything like this data breach, which we now find out took place in February 2022, is likely to happen again. Most importantly, I think it will help to provide the reassurance that anyone providing data to the British Government or state should have that that data will be held and handled securely.

If the Defence Secretary will forgive me, I detect some wriggling. The fact is that he is justifying this super-injunction and not telling Parliament, the press, the public and, unbelievably, the Afghans who were potentially in harm’s way. Is it not the case that his argument is actually very thin? Even the MOD admits that Taliban-aligned individuals already had access to the database, so not telling those Afghans that they were in harm’s way is, quite frankly, unbelievable. The precedent of a super-injunction is very concerning for this place. How do we know that there is not another super-junction about another leak? Of course, the Secretary of State could not tell us, could he?

Well, I can say to the right hon. Gentleman that if there is another super-injunction, I have not been read in. In his characteristic way, he makes an important point about how unprecedented, uncomfortable and, in many ways, unconscionable it is to have a super-injunction like this in place. In the light of that, I hope he will accept that it was a difficult decision to review the risks, the costs and details of the scheme, and the legal hearings that have taken place. Those have all been components of the important policy decision that I have been able to announce to the House today, and I hope he will back it.

My husband served in Afghanistan and has always felt keenly the debt that our country owes to those who worked alongside and supported our forces, and I know that many of my constituents who served there feel the same. If we fail to honour our debts, why should people in future conflicts trust us and support our troops? Does the Defence Secretary share that concern? Does he also agree that it is right that we offer a warm welcome to the Afghans who come to our country seeking sanctuary?

I agree 100%, Mr Speaker. My hon. Friend speaks so plainly, so forcefully and so passionately. When we first debated the obligation to put in place the ARAP scheme four or five years ago, when I was shadow Secretary of State for Defence, one of the things that struck me most was that those who felt fiercest were, understandably, those who had served—those in this House who had been part of the 140,000 British men and women who had served in Afghanistan over 20 years—because they recognised just what a debt this country and they owe to people like those whom my hon. Friend’s husband speaks about.

I welcome the Secretary of State’s pledge to restore full accountability to the Government’s relocation schemes, but I am saddened that this is the first opportunity that we have had to talk about the closure of ACRS and ARAP on the Floor of the House, given that they were announced by written statement at very short notice only two weeks ago. May I ask a couple of specific questions? On the ARR, which we have only found out about today, the Secretary of State mentioned 600 invitations that will be honoured. For those who were not accepted and are part of the breach, are they aware of that? ARAP has been closed to new applications, but, again—I have asked the Minister of State for the Armed Forces about this before—what is the communication strategy for updating them? The ACRS was never open to vulnerable women and the civil rights defenders it aimed to protect. Again, what communication will the Government have with those individuals who are in hiding either in Afghanistan or in third countries?

We made a statement about the closure of the Home Office-run ARAP and ACRS on 1 July, and the hon. Lady will have had opportunities since then to raise those matters in the House. On the information to those who may be affected, we will honour the invitations that have been issued to 600 ARR individuals. To everyone else in the dataset, we have communicated the latest position this morning. We are offering access to further advice through the designated area of the gov.uk website, and that includes steps that individuals can take, if they wish, to get in touch with our information services centre, which has been set up by the MOD to deal with questions and concerns that people may have.

It is a very shocking story that the Secretary of State has told us today, and I pay tribute to him for his commitment to be transparent about it. Sadly, this comes as no surprise to many of us here and to those in our offices who, over that period of time, had to deal with hundreds of desperately distraught people ringing in to find out what might happen to their relatives. I have to be honest with the Secretary of State: this matter is not closed. I join the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) in being desperately concerned that we still have people who would have qualified under these schemes, but who, because of failures like this, fled Afghanistan or tried to go to other countries. We tried to raise this issue with Ministers, but could not get meetings with them, and now we discover that there were secret schemes. The Secretary of State will understand that, right now, MPs’ offices across this country will be hearing this and be worried that, again, they will get those phone calls and have those queries. He is right to say that there must be parliamentary scrutiny. Can he assure us that there will be additional resources to help us support our constituents who come forward and that he will keep an open mind that, even four years later, there will still be cases that are relevant to this scheme that should be heard—people who should be given sanctuary here—if we are to honour our debt to those people who kept our forces safe?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been one of the most active and most assiduous Members of this House in championing the cause of her constituents and others who may be trying to get access to the scheme. It has been over four years since the ARAP scheme was first established, and there are still 22,000 ARAP applicants whose applications will be processed. Where eligibility is established, they will be offered the relocation that this country has undertaken to give them. Those applicants need not have applied from Afghanistan, but many did so. From the outset, one of the most important features of the ARAP scheme—given that the Taliban had taken over in Afghanistan—was that it applied to female Afghans who formerly worked alongside our own forces and even served in the Afghan forces alongside our own, who have potentially been at greatest risk. For them, the offer to relocate to this country, and to rebuild and re-establish a life here, has been very important.

I commend the Secretary of State for the calm and sensible way in which he has announced the change in Government policy today. I can already announce to the House that, since the briefing earlier today, I have made preliminary arrangements for MOD officials to address the Public Accounts Committee to examine the cost implications. Some £400 million has been spent so far, and I think the Secretary of State said in parentheses that another £400 million will be spent on the 600 people currently based in Afghanistan who have received invitations under the scheme. Can he give me and the House an assurance that if those 600 people, who must be in some danger, do need assistance, it will be rapidly provided?

The hon. Gentleman is very fast off the mark, and I am glad that he has already issued his invitation to his Committee. He is asking for figures as Chair of the PAC. The cost of what has been spent and committed in order to get in transit to Britain the 900 principals eligible under ARR, plus their immediate family members, is around £400 million. For the remaining members of the ARR and their immediate families who have been issued invitations, we expect something similar again. But because of the policy decisions that we have been able to announce and the changes that we have been able to make to the programmes we inherited—he may want to probe this with his Committee—it means that the taxpayer should be paying £1.2 billion less over the next few years, and that around 9,500 fewer Afghans will come to this country.

I welcome the Government’s decision to support the lifting of the super-injunction today and bring this awful matter properly into the public domain. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is right and proper that this issue is now fully scrutinised by Parliament?

I do, indeed. One important feature for me in being able to make this statement and to set out the details before the House this afternoon has been that we are now restoring the proper parliamentary accountability of Ministers to this House for the decisions that we take, the schemes that we run and the spending that we commit on behalf of the taxpayer. I look forward to Members in this Chamber—and, I hope, in the appropriate Committees—undertaking their proper constitutional role in a way they have not been able to do over the past two years without being constrained.

This has been a difficult statement for the Secretary of State—make no mistake. He said in his statement that this was a breach of very strict data protection protocols. Well, on the basis of this breach and the other breaches around Afghan resettlement, those protocols were clearly not strict enough. He has declined to say whether it was a contractor, a civil servant or a member of service personnel. I do not think that anyone in this House wants to know who it was, but I would like to know how senior that person was. If it was a junior member of MOD staff, the delinquency is both systemic and personal, but if it was a senior member of MOD staff, the delinquency is purely personal on the basis of their knowledge and seniority. This instance related to brave Afghans, but what reassurance can the Secretary of State give us that the brave personnel of the UK forces would not be compromised by a level of delinquency similar to this in the MOD—and why the synchronicity between the lifting of the super-injunction and the ending of the schemes? Should we not walk a mile in the shoes of the people who have fled the Afghan regime, and do should we maybe think whether we need an ARR-plus wash-up to get these people out of danger if it becomes a reality?

I wanted this House to hear the policy decisions that I had made and I wanted this House to hear them first. The judge, aware of the decisions that the Government had taken and the announcements that I was planning to make today, took his decision to lift the super-injunction and to deliver his court judgment at noon. On the question of the individual responsible for the original data loss, that is not something I am prepared to pursue in this House. Clearly the overarching responsibility was with the Ministers at the time. My full focus has been to get to grips with what we inherited, take a fresh look at the policy that was in place, and be in a position—with the proper degree of deliberation, and with sound grounds—to come to the House and announce the changes I have this afternoon.

As I am sure many Members do, I feel a sense of anger that once again the Afghan people have been betrayed. I thank the Secretary of State for his candour and his response, and for lifting the super-injunction, which will allow proper parliamentary scrutiny, but will he assure me that the following three questions will be answered? First, how was a year allowed to pass between the initial leak and it being uncovered? Secondly, how was an email with a spreadsheet attached considered a serious way to send around what effectively amounted to a kill list of Afghans for the Taliban? Thirdly, the role of James Heappey in overseeing this has been mentioned. What role, if any, was held by the two Secretaries of State for Defence over that time, one who served until August 2023 and one who served from August 2023—to my mind, either side of the information coming to light? If we do not get to the bottom of those questions, we will do an immense disservice to the British people and, worse, to Afghans, who have been let down once again.

My hon. Friend signals some of the areas that the necessary parliamentary scrutiny will consider. I have to say, it was 18 months, not one year, between the original data loss and when it was first discovered and brought to Ministers’ attention in August 2023. To his second question about the spreadsheet, this was a period in which officials and the Department were working at breakneck speed to put in place novel schemes that were urgently needed. Clearly that sort of spreadsheet software is inappropriate for this casework system, and it is no longer used in that way. Finally, on the role of my predecessors, Grant Shapps was the Defence Secretary who oversaw the design, extension and establishment of the ARR scheme.

As well as risking lives, this extraordinary error has cost taxpayers huge sums. The Secretary of State says that it will now cost £1.2 billion less, but what will be the total cost of all these schemes after that? First, given the extraordinary lack of transparency that this Parliament has been subjected to—and voters too—will the Secretary of State agree to publish the legal advice that led to the expansion of the ARR and other schemes so that we can properly discuss it? Secondly, the Secretary of State did not mention any official resigning or being sacked over this extraordinary episode. I think my constituents will find that quite surprising. Will he name the number of people who have resigned or been sacked over this extraordinary error, and if nobody has been, does he agree that that is wrong?

I am not in a position to make a decision about publishing the legal advice that led the previous Government and Defence Secretary to extend the scheme. It is not legal advice that I have had access to or seen. On the question of costs, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, will do the job. I can confirm that the total cost of all Afghan relocation schemes to date, for those 36,000 Afghans who have been brought to this country, is around £2.7 billion. The expected cost over the entire lifetime of those schemes, to bring in anyone who may subsequently prove eligible, is between £5.5 billion and £6 billion. That is at least £1.2 billion less because of the policy decisions I have taken this afternoon.

I thank the Secretary of State for his openness and transparency, and for his apology, and I thank Portsmouth city council for its involvement in Afghan resettlement schemes, which have helped many of those who served alongside my Portsmouth North constituents. I welcome today’s decision. The Government rightly took time to consider all the options and examine the complexities, including through the Rimmer review. They considered the cost to taxpayers and the safety of those affected, alongside the need for transparency and openness in this House and to the press and the public. Does the Secretary of State agree that we must, as a Government, reaffirm our commitment to public transparency?

I do agree, and this House is doing so this afternoon in response to my statement. The role that my hon. Friend’s local council in Portsmouth and councils across the country are playing in making sure that there is a warm welcome and a unified Afghan resettlement programme in place for those Afghans and their families who we are welcoming into this country is remarkable. We thank them for that. Central Government and this House could not see these schemes operate effectively without our local councils.

I commend the Secretary of State’s statement. I will not dwell on the past, because I am sure that the Defence Committee and other Select Committees will have a look at that. I want to ask him about where this goes in future. All these schemes are closing, but there are still people out there who do not recognise the statement in the report that there is no longer a widespread campaign of targeting individuals. I have one case in my mind. The Minister for the Armed Forces knows exactly who I am referring to: Sami Atayee, who has fled and is in hiding in Pakistan, and whose brother has been arrested during the pursuit. He was not directly employed by the British Government—he could not have been, for security reasons—but the testament of General Olly Brown and others all say that he saved lives for British servicemen and servicewomen. We surely owe people like that a debt of honour and gratitude for their work, so I simply ask the Secretary of State to look at what might replace the schemes that he has got rid of, which were inflexible, very narrow and often left out those who really did this Government a service. I would be grateful if he came up with some flexible idea that allows some of these people to seek succour here in the United Kingdom.

I hesitate to be too blunt with the right hon. Gentleman, because I have a great deal of respect for him. If any applicant is not eligible under the criteria of the scheme that this House has approved and the Government have in place and operate, that can really only lead to one decision. He encourages me to look in a creative way at other options. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces is very familiar with the case that the right hon. Gentleman raises. We will look at it again, but I do not want to raise false hopes for him, or for the man whom he describes so vividly, and with such concern.

I am proud that Bracknell Forest is involved in the Afghan resettlement programme, and is offering transitional support to the brave Afghans who risked their life to support our troops. Any such scheme depends on public trust, so it is concerning to hear that under the Conservative Government, we instead had secrecy, security breaches and a super-injunction. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to reaffirm two commitments: first, that this Government will continue to honour the moral obligation we owe to the Afghans who fought alongside our troops, and, secondly, that we will do so in a way that reaffirms this Government’s commitment to public transparency?

I will indeed reaffirm our continuing commitment to honouring the obligations and duty that we owe to those who served or worked alongside our forces. Through the ARAP scheme, we will complete the processing of any outstanding applications, and any who prove eligible will get full relocation and resettlement support. I am glad to be able to restore a degree of that parliamentary scrutiny and transparency that our system in Britain depends on.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He said: “When this nation makes a promise, we should keep it.” I agree. In the chaos of withdrawal, my constituent who left under ARAP was made a promise by British officials that his pregnant wife could follow him. Two years later, we have still not kept that promise. My constituent’s wife and child continue to move around in Afghanistan to evade the Taliban, and my constituent is so desperate that he is talking about returning to Afghanistan—despite the risk to him—to be reunited with them. The Minister for the Armed Forces, who knows the case, has told me that the Ministry of Defence will not consider it, and that this is now a matter for the Home Office. In the light of that, will the Secretary of State repeat his commitment that our nation should keep its promise to my constituent? Will he undertake to discuss with the Home Secretary how her Department will ensure that such cases are afforded proper treatment in the light of our commitment to the Afghan people?

I will take a look at the case and, if required, I will speak to my right hon. Friend and colleague, the Home Secretary.

I pay tribute to all the diplomats and armed forces involved in what was clearly an extraordinary operation. It is a stark reminder that our asylum system—despite the demagoguery we sometimes hear in this place—often represents a sacred duty to those who put their lives at risk for us and our allies. Will the Secretary of State confirm that while the ARR is now closed, we will continue to process cases of those in the ARAP scheme since 1 July, including the one that I have raised with officials?

My hon. Friend speaks powerfully. Where there are outstanding ARAP applications, they will be processed. Where there are outstanding Triples cases that fall into the second phase of the review, that review will be completed, and where eligibility for ARAP entitlement is established, that will be honoured.

I thank the Defence Secretary for his statement, but I think it asks a lot more questions than it answers. Will he outline exactly how the dataset came to be accidentally emailed? Will he confirm that it was indeed an accident? What was the security classification of that dataset? Who was the dataset emailed to, given that it is now feared to be in the hands of the Taliban? I appreciate that he might not be able to answer some of those questions, but given that this happened three years ago, what level of investigation has taken place? Can that be published?

I think that I reported earlier to the House that the incident under previous Ministers was reported to the Metropolitan police. It was also reported to the Information Commissioner. The Met police deemed no criminal investigation or further action to be required. The Information Commissioner still has the case—we are working closely with them—and I would expect some conclusions and judgments from the Information Commissioner’s Office before too long, but I simply cannot say when.

I ran an aid agency when the Taliban came to power in 2021 and vividly recall trying to get the then Government to help with the evacuation of brave Afghan colleagues, aid workers and human rights defenders—people who had served humanity—under huge threat. I remember the confusion that reigned in the UK Government. To hear that the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians were further put at risk by this data breach is deeply shocking. The Defence Secretary will know that under the Taliban, Afghan women and girls are enduring the world’s most severe women’s rights crisis. Does he agree that the UK must do all it can to support the women and girls of Afghanistan in realising their right to equality?

I do. Where female Afghans are eligible for the schemes, it has been important that they have been able to apply, and we have been able to offer them the same relocation and resettlement as others. My hon. Friend speaks with great authority and passion about that period in Afghanistan four years ago, when the Taliban were taking over as Kabul fell. I am sad to say that her characterisation of policy confusion and programme failure is exactly what was going on in the British Government at that time.

The Secretary of State will know that communities in Wales, as across the UK, have been proud to welcome those Afghans and their families who served alongside UK personnel. Many colleagues have raised concern about the Afghans who might remain in Afghanistan or in adjacent countries and may still be in danger for their services rendered. How confident can we be that all those in severe and imminent danger of reprisals will receive invitations for resettlement?

Those who have received invitations will have those honoured. On the concerns that the hon. Member may have about the assessment of risk in Afghanistan, I recommend that he reads Paul Rimmer’s report, which is comprehensive and up to date. It inevitably contains some uncertainties, and it identifies the risks that are inevitably there in any policy judgments that Government Ministers like me must make. I will also reinforce the point that the hon. Member made about the welcome and the pride with which the Welsh people embrace those Afghans who come to rebuild their lives in our country.

My constituent has an active application to bring members of his family, who are currently in a third country, to safety in the UK. The MOD has advised him to assume that their data has been compromised, which is deeply concerning given the nature of the work he used to undertake. He has been told that this third country cannot be supported, even though his family might not be safe in Afghanistan. Will the Secretary of State help to ensure that his case is accelerated, given the further danger that the data leak may have put his family in?

If my hon. Friend writes to me with the details of that case, I will certainly take a hard look at it.

I thank the Secretary of State very much for his well-chosen, careful, contrite words, which were said in a tone that the House appreciates. As an MP who has often decried the abandonment of those Afghans who helped to secure safety for our troops, and whose job put them in the firing line, I must agree with the principle of doing the right thing, and being a nation that is seen globally as supporting those who support us. The issue of secrecy to the House is critical; the Secretary of State has outlined that. Does he agree that Governments must always totally protect those who were put in harm’s way, under the principle of doing what it is always right to do? I think of my constituent who served along with our forces in Afghanistan, and whose Afghan friend is in hiding in Pakistan with his wife and three children. I think of him and the fear he is in. If I send the Secretary of State the details of that gentleman and his family, will he ensure that he gets the help we should give him? That is what my constituent wants, what I want as his MP, and what that person wants.

I appreciate the way in which the hon. Gentleman raised his concerns about that case. If he writes to me with the details, I will take a hard look at it.

I served twice in Afghanistan alongside some of the bravest soldiers, judges and women’s rights defenders I have met. After the fall of Kabul, I was based in Pakistan with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, where I was involved in the evacuation from Afghanistan. At that time, despite the excellent work of people who served in Op Pitting, we saw many mistakes made by the last Government, including dogs being prioritised ahead of people. This data breach, which was held secret for years, is just the latest embarrassment from that evacuation. Will the Secretary of State consider a Select Committee inquiry into not just the breaches in this case, but the entire Afghan relocation system, which has failed so many times?

One of the great joys of this House is the depth and breadth of experience that Members on all sides bring to debates. I applaud my hon. Friend and the insights he brings from his experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is certainly not for Ministers to define the terms of any inquiry that a Select Committee of this House may choose to undertake. That will be a matter, quite properly, for those Committees. If Ministers are summoned and required to account and give evidence, we certainly will.