Afghanistan

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 15 July.

“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 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”.

15:50:00

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for taking the time to speak with me extensively before the Statement. I thank him and his colleague, the Secretary of State for Defence in the other place, for the tone they have adopted. I join the Secretary of State and my honourable friend the shadow Secretary of State James Cartlidge in their apology, on behalf of the British Government, to all those impacted by the data leak. It was a wholly unacceptable breach of data protection protocols and should never have happened. This is a story of human error, an error of magnitude with profoundly grave and potentially tragic consequences, that was perpetrated by an MoD official and came to light only some 18 months or so after it occurred. Although as a Defence Minister I had no involvement in the issue, at that point in August 2023 the priority was to take all necessary steps as a matter of urgency to mitigate risk to life, hence the court’s involvement that culminated in the grant of a super-injunction. It was the political judgment of the last Government to seek the court’s intervention, and the decision of the court to grant a super-injunction clearly reflected how gravely the court regarded the risk to life. A court injunction is neither a cover-up nor political suppression of information; it is a court order. No one should be under any misunderstanding about the potential consequence of this leak. If the Government had not sought the injunction, that data could have been disseminated globally through the media. This could have put the lives of countless Afghans at risk—people who helped Britain in our fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who saved the lives of British troops and who are incredibly brave, selfless and committed individuals who put everything at risk, including their families, to help us. If the Government had not sought to prevent the information being disseminated, those Afghans, who gave so much, could have been captured, tortured and murdered. The previous Government would have abnegated their responsibilities if we had left these Afghans to suffer the consequences of this data breach. That is why it was right to seek the injunction and resettle those affected in the UK. I might observe that, regardless of what Government were in power at the time, these measures were the correct ones to take in the circumstances existing at the time. Indeed, on taking office, the current Government did not seek to have the super-injunction lifted. Although this was human error and not a political mistake, the political responsibility is to keep the situation under review. It was right that this Government should seek expert advice on whether it was now appropriate to seek to lift the super-injunction and, if so advised, to make the necessary application to the court. In that, the Government have the full support of these Benches. I understand that the Minister will be limited in what he can say, but I have a few questions for him. Is he in a position to give the House any more details on how the leak happened? I would have thought that there would have been digital safeguards within the MoD that prevented an email with a sensitive attachment being sent to a random person outside the department. What processes were in place to prevent this happening, and why were they not effective? Secondly, can the Minister tell us what the repercussions were for the official who inadvertently sent the data outside formal channels? Finally, what systems have the Government now put in place to learn from this regrettable episode and ensure that everything has been done to prevent a recurrence? As ever, I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I once again thank him for the manner in which he has approached this matter to date.

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and to the Minister for the Armed Forces for a briefing yesterday. It meant that, temporarily, I was under a super-injunction. I was a little surprised when I was summoned to the MoD. On Monday afternoon I received a message asking me to come in for a confidential briefing. I had no idea what to expect, or of the magnitude of what we would hear in the Statement made by the Secretary of State yesterday. It is a matter of extreme seriousness for a variety of reasons—the risk into which an official and the MoD placed Afghans who were already vulnerable, but also the fact that Parliament was entirely unable to scrutinise His Majesty’s Government on this issue for almost two years. The media reported immediately after the super-injunction was raised yesterday at midday; they had spent the last 22 months gathering evidence that, of course, they could not publish. There is a whole set of questions that are probably beyond the remit of the Minister who is responding today on behalf of the MoD, including what scrutiny Parliament is able to do and what the Government feel is appropriate regarding the media. Were the media being suppressed? Lest anyone think that I am being cavalier about the lives of Afghans, it was absolutely clear that the United Kingdom had a duty to those Afghans who worked alongside His Majesty’s Armed Forces, including the interpreters and those who worked for the British Council. In light of that, the ARAP and ACRS schemes, which we all knew about, were the right approach. Yet we already knew, from open source material and cases that were brought to this House and the other place, that breaches of data had caused fines to be paid. At the time of the evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021, it was clear that many people were left behind, and that the helplines were not necessarily fit for purpose. The hotline for parliamentarians and their staff did not necessarily act as a hotline at all. I certainly left messages about cases and received no follow-up or reply. I was not alone in that and, although I believe that I was not part of this data breach, some parliamentarians were. We began to acknowledge our debt to some of the Afghans, but not all. Then a data breach, about which we knew nothing, happened over three years ago. That in itself is shocking. Has anybody in His Majesty’s Government taken responsibility for that? We understand from the Statement that it was reported to the Metropolitan Police, which believed that there was no criminal activity. Has anybody taken responsibility for this catastrophic data breach that potentially put many tens of thousands of lives in Afghanistan at risk and caused considerable concern to Afghans who were already in the UK, having come over as part of the ARAP scheme? The former Secretary of State, Sir Ben Wallace, has said that the super-injunction was not a cover-up, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. Yet Mr Justice Chamberlain, who finally lifted the super-injunction yesterday, said in November 2023 that a super-injunction “is likely to give rise to understandable suspicion that the court’s processes are being used for the purposes of censorship … This is corrosive of the public’s trust in Government”. Does the Minister agree? Can he confirm that this Government would not seek to use a super-injunction or, in the event that it was felt that a super-injunction was an appropriate course of action, that it would not last for more than 600 days but could be for a very limited amount of time while a particular, specific policy needed to be undertaken? The substantive policy change that was brought in—the Afghanistan response route—seems to have been very sensible. Had it been brought to your Lordships’ House and the other place, parliamentarians may well have thought that it was the right policy and been happy to endorse it—but we were never asked, because of the super-injunction. We knew nothing about it. Could the Minister tell us whether, in future, the Intelligence and Security Committee might be briefed in camera? What role would Parliament and the media be allowed to play? If the courts, Parliament and the media are not deployed appropriately, that raises questions about our own democracy that need to be considered.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, for their comments and their words about the way in which the Government tried to inform His Majesty’s Opposition and the defence spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. We tried to ensure that as many Members of your Lordships’ House, as well as other people in the other place, were informed as appropriate. I apologise if that did not happen with everybody who may have expected to have been informed, but we tried to ensure that everybody was consulted and spoken to. I join the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, in the apologies that His Majesty’s Government, through me, again make today for what happened, which was totally unacceptable. Before I answer the specific questions, I shall make a couple of opening remarks. The whole House will agree that the UK owes a huge debt of gratitude to all those Afghans who fought alongside us and supported our efforts in Afghanistan. Although I appreciate that there is significant parliamentary and media concern around these issues, and rightly so, let us not also forget that we are talking about human lives. As noble Lords will know, a major data loss occurred in February 2022, involving the dissemination of a spreadsheet containing names of applicants to the ARAP scheme. The previous Government responded by setting up a new assessment route—the Afghanistan response route—to protect the most at-risk individuals whose data was disseminated. The data, and the lives that sit behind them, were protected by an unprecedented super-injunction, which was granted by the High Court, based on the threat posed to those individuals. That is a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, made: it is the court that grants an injunction, and when the Government asked for an injunction they were granted a super-injunction. It is our view that the previous Government acted in good faith to protect lives. However, when this Government took office, Ministers felt deeply uncomfortable —to go to some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, made—with the limits that the super-injunction placed on freedom of the press and parliamentary scrutiny. As a result, we therefore commissioned a reassessment of the situation, led by a former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, Paul Rimmer. Mr Rimmer, following a comprehensive review, found that it is “unlikely that merely being on the dataset would be grounds for targeting” by the Taliban. He also found that there was no evidence pointing to Taliban possession of the dataset. We have therefore decided, as have the courts, that the risks have reduced, and that the existence of the scheme and its associated costs should be brought into the public and parliamentary realms for the appropriate scrutiny. Therefore, we expect and invite parliamentary scrutiny for these decisions. I will deal with a couple of the points that have been made. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, asked me how this happened. I do not normally do this, as noble Lords know, but I will read out from my brief so that I get it factually right. In February 2022, under the previous Government, a spreadsheet with names of individual applicants for ARAP—the resettlement scheme for Afghan citizens who worked for or with the UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan—was emailed outside of official government systems. This was mistakenly thought to contain the names of a small number of applicants, but in fact the email contained personal information linked to 18,700 applicants of ARAP and its predecessor, the ex-gratia scheme, or EGS. The data related to applications made on or before 7 January 2022. A small section of this spreadsheet appeared online on 14 August 2023, which is when the then Government first became aware that the MoD’s ARAP casework and spreadsheet had been mistakenly included with the original email. The previous Government investigated that and a report was sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office. I repeat that the Government reported this to the Metropolitan Police, which found that there was no malicious or malign intent by the individual responsible. The noble Baroness asked whether we believe that the systems have now been adequately changed. In a statement yesterday, the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “We’re reassured that the MoD’s investigation has resulted in taking necessary steps and minimised the risk of this happening again”. I hope that will begin to reassure the noble Baroness with respect to her point about how the leak happened, the measures that have been taken and the way it has been looked at and investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which has now reported in a statement yesterday that it believes the MoD has, as far as it possibly can, taken the necessary action to prevent such a terrible and unfortunate incident happening again. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, of course it is of great concern that parliamentary and media scrutiny had, essentially, to be stopped. Parliament and the press have not been able to scrutinise the activity and decisions in the way that they should. When we came into office, we were, fairly obviously, uncomfortable with that. We looked at the facts and the situation and, in January this year, as the noble Baroness will know, the Secretary of State asked Mr Rimmer, a former senior officer at Defence Intelligence, to investigate. Noble Lords will have seen Mr Rimmer’s report. There are a number of important facts in its key conclusions, including that: “No evidence points clearly to Taleban possession of the dataset”, and the fact that the policy “appears an extremely significant intervention, with not inconsiderable risk to HMG and the UK, to address the potentially limited net additional risk the incident likely presents”. In other words, with where we are now, after the passage of time and the various assessments of the risk in Afghanistan, Mr Rimmer now believes that it is appropriate for the Government to apply to the court to lift the injunction. With the evidence provided in the Government’s presentation, it was lifted at Noon yesterday. The Government have decided that the time is right to make a Statement about what has happened, put as much of that evidence as possible into the public domain, and invite public, media and parliamentary scrutiny of it. That is the right thing to do. At the end, in government, there is always a balance between making decisions about how to protect lives in a particular situation and recognising that you must have parliamentary and media scrutiny. The previous Government acted in good faith. We have looked at that again and believe that now is the right time for us to come forward, to publicise what happened and to invite comment from everyone. I hope noble Lords will accept that explanation.

16:10:00

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords—

Excuse me, it is the turn of Labour and then the Cross Benches.

My Lords, if the reporting is correct, I understand that the date of the super-injunction was 1 September 2023 and that it was granted at the instigation of the then Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps. Eight months later, in debates on the safety of Rwanda Bill, I repeatedly moved an amendment to exclude from deportation to Rwanda Afghans who had served with British forces but had arrived here via irregular routes, no safe route being available. As these debates were taking place, some of the very people I was trying to exclude were being flown here by the United Kingdom without almost any Member of this House or the other place being aware. Why was I not told? Why was your Lordships’ House not told? If that was due to the super-injunction, why did the Government not accept my amendment? If my noble friend cannot answer any of these questions because he was not in government at the time, can he guarantee that we will have a chance to ask those questions and get them answered?

I thank my noble friend for his question. My understanding—and there are better lawyers in here than I—is that the Ministers would have believed themselves to be subject to the injunction and the super-injunction, and that would constrain what they would or would not be able to say. But now that we have gone to the High Court to say that we believe the time is right for that super-injunction to be lifted, and the court has agreed with us, we are able to debate and discuss the very points that my noble friend has raised. No doubt these are the questions that, over the coming days, weeks and months, I and others will be asked to account for—quite rightly.

My Lords, it has been stated again and again that the person responsible for the loss of data thought that the spreadsheet contained a small number of names, whereas it actually contained a very large number of names. Surely this is irrelevant. It is the fact that it was used on a non-departmental system, not the number of names, that constitutes the breach. This has been presented as an individual failing, but one cannot help but notice that it seems to have originated in the same part of the Ministry of Defence which contemporaneously was making some rather questionable judgments and decisions about the so-called Triples, which must raise questions in people’s minds about the overall degree of supervision and direction of that part of the Ministry of Defence. Can the Minister reassure the House that this is being looked at in that wider context?

I thank the noble and gallant Lord for this important question, which the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Goldie, also asked, as to how on earth this could have happened. First of all, it was really important to ascertain whether there was any criminal or malign intent. The previous Government were quite right to refer that to the police for investigation. As I have already said, the police found that there was no evidence of any criminal or malign intent. Alongside that, it was referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The answer to the noble and gallant Lord’s question is the whole of the statement that the Information Commissioner’s Office made yesterday about its investigation into what happened, and into the way in which the Ministry of Defence has changed many of the processes that it had in place and its management arrangements to ensure as far as possible that we would not see that again. The importance of that is the independence of the Information Commissioner’s Office looking at what the MoD was doing, rather than the MoD marking its own homework.

My Lords, yesterday, the Secretary of State for Defence described the super-injunction as “unprecedented, uncomfortable and, in many ways, unconscionable”. —[Official Report, Commons, 15/7/25; col. 160.] Given that, does the Minister agree that if, in the future, super-injunctions are sought, or their renewal is sought, the application will be made only with the consent of not just the relevant Secretary of State but the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General?

My Lords, the noble Viscount, with his legal understanding and background, makes an interesting point. I cannot confirm whether that would be the right process and way forward but it is certainly something that should be thought about and considered. I will ensure that that suggestion is put into the process, but I cannot guarantee that it is the right way forward. I would need to talk to other colleagues about whether it is, but I thank him for his suggestion.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend and Min AF for their briefing to me yesterday in my role as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. At that briefing, Min AF said that Defence Intelligence undertook an assessment of those individuals who were at risk. We now know from Paul Rimmer’s report that other assessments were taken forward by Defence Intelligence. The Intelligence and Security Committee is the only committee of Parliament that can actually look at these detailed intelligence reports. Contrary to what the former Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, said on Radio 4 this morning, the Intelligence and Security Committee has full oversight of Defence Intelligence and does and can receive current intelligence. I therefore ask my noble friend: will the MoD now release these reports to the committee, or do I, at the meeting of the committee tomorrow, have to formally require the Government to produce these reports to the committee under our powers under the Justice and Security Act 2013?

My noble friend, as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, points to its important role. I would think that every report should be made available to the committee, given that it was set up specifically to give parliamentary scrutiny to difficult intelligence decisions, but under the protection of the way in which it operates. I say to my noble friend that I would expect that to happen—I hope that there is not some process of which I am not aware that means I am not supposed to say so. In all openness, and in trying to be transparent about this, I would think that the Intelligence and Security Committee, given the way in which it operates, should have everything made available to it so that it can consider it and, where necessary, question Ministers and others.

My Lords, there are those in the other place who are spreading misinformation about the nature of the checks that were undertaken for those coming from Afghanistan to the United Kingdom. It is in the Statement, but it would be helpful for the House—and the public—if the Minister could reassure us from the Dispatch Box that every individual coming to the United Kingdom under all three of the schemes that were set up, including the one that was not made known until yesterday, was subject to proper national security checks to protect the public.

Indeed. Under both the previous Government and this Government, the fact that you are deemed eligible with respect to the Afghan resettlement programme does not mean that you do not have security checks made upon you. Let me be clear: that is for everybody who is said to be eligible under that scheme to come to the United Kingdom. I remind noble Lords that, if someone comes to the United Kingdom under that scheme, they automatically get indefinite leave to remain. I further remind noble Lords that the second part of that is for people to undergo security checks to make sure that they are not people who would come here and commit crime, or worse. On the particular individual to whom the noble Lord referred, who has made those allegations and said what he has said, if he has specific allegations, he should—as many have said—go to the police to report them, rather than just cast aspersions.

I think noble Lords in this House would agree that the last Government and this Government acted properly in handling this, in every substantive respect. Unfortunately, that is not how this case, at least in part, is being presented in the media. Part of the media is still presenting this as if there has been some kind of cover-up at some stage, to protect the politicians who were in power at the time. Can the Minister categorically assure the House, on the basis of the evidence he has seen, that that was not the case and that, in looking at this issue, the previous Government acted entirely properly—as have this Government, in my view—at every stage?

As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and others, the last Government acted in good faith in a way that they believed would protect people who had been put at risk by the data breach. They also went to the court for an injunction. The court itself granted a super-injunction, the thrust of which was to try to protect people from the consequences of having their names inadvertently put into the public domain. The previous Government did that. When we came to power, we decided that we needed to look at this to see whether it was still proportionate and how we should act. On the basis of the Rimmer review, we changed that. I sometimes wonder what the consequences would have been for any Government had that happened and lots of people had been killed.

My Lords, the logic behind the basic injunction to protect these vulnerable people in the wake of a catastrophic data breach is understandable and the application is laudable; the super-injunction is less so. Is my noble friend the Minister able to open up a little more? Has he been briefed on the rationale behind the super-injunction, or at least on the Government of the day not applying some time ago, if not immediately, for the super-injunction, which did not protect the sensitive data but the fact that there was a breach? What was the rationale for not seeking to suspend the super-injunction? That is where the constitutional concern lies, for the then and future Government.

I understand my noble friend’s point. I respond with trepidation, because I do not want to get into a legal discussion with her, as her legal knowledge is far greater than mine. My understanding was that the previous Government asked for an injunction and then the court decided, on the basis of what it was told, that it was necessary for there to be a super-injunction. That was granted by the courts because of the threat that people faced. It was then renewed over a period of time. In the summer of 2024, the High Court suspended the injunction and gave the last Government 21 days to appeal. The Government appealed and the Appeal Court allowed the reimposition of the super-injunction. I can only presume that that was on the basis that the court was persuaded that the threat still existed for those whose data had been inadvertently put into the public domain. On the basis of knowledge we accumulated over a few months, we decided to undertake the Rimmer review, which gave us the evidence to go back to the court and say that we no longer believed that the injunction was necessary for the protection of those individuals. The court accepted the Government’s new evidence, from the report, that the super-injunction was not necessary. At 12 pm yesterday, the injunction was lifted, and at 12.30 pm, my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary made a Statement in the other place, and we have come here today to make a Statement, which I have no doubt will be the first of many.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords—

We will hear from the Tory Benches.

My Lords, as I am sure the Minister is aware, there are a number of Afghans who are on the run from the Taliban, some of them in Pakistan, terrified about being sent back. The Taliban threatened to hunt down any woman who had played a public role. Could the Minister tell me whether there were any Afghan women on the list that leaked?

We are trying to contact anybody on the list, whether they are in Afghanistan or Pakistan, who has been designated eligible for the scheme, to ensure that they understand that we will honour the commitment we have made to them. Whether they are in Pakistan or in any other country, we will honour the commitment we have made to them and try to ensure they get passage here. The noble Baroness will understand why I will not say any more than that, as it would compromise people we are trying to bring here.

My Lords, I say, if I might, how encouraging it is that the Government are working so closely with the Opposition on this issue. It helps increase respect for and trust in the British political system. It was absolutely right that there should have been a super-injunction. My question is related to the effect of lifting the super-injunction at this stage. The Rimmer report says that there will be no added risk and a human judgment has to be made about whether or not that is the case. Undoubtably, the huge amount of publicity about registering the super-injunction is going to have an effect. Will anybody in the MoD be looking at the lifting of the super-injunction to see what kind of result there has been and whether there has been a significant effect which has increased the risk of vulnerable people?

We will keep everything under review and look to see what the consequences of the decision we have made are. Following on from what the noble Baroness said about women in Pakistan, our initial focus is to try to ensure that, for everybody who is eligible for the various schemes, we honour the commitment that we made to them. There are still hundreds of people; the number of people still to be relocated under the Afghan response route, which is the scheme that was not publicised, is 600. We are trying to ensure that we know where they are and to bring them here, with approximately 2,700 family members. That, along with our other commitments, is our first priority: to try to ensure that we bring to the UK those we have made a commitment to.

My Lords, I do not know whether my question is for my noble friend the Minister or for the party opposite. While I can totally understand why an injunction was sought to protect the content of the leak and to protect lives, I would like to understand—perhaps my noble friend can explain—why an injunction was sought to prevent our media reporting the fact of the leak.

It is difficult for me to comment exactly on the motivation of the last Government, although I believe they acted in good faith. If I put myself in their position, I think the motivation behind the injunction would be to protect not only the names but the fact that the dataset exists, to prevent people looking for such a dataset through the various means by which they would. For us, that was an argument that was made, and, over a period of time, we got to the point where it no longer held. As soon as we had the independent evidence to go to the court, we went to the court, to enable the parliamentary and media scrutiny that there should be of the actions that were and are being taken.

I am afraid I am a little less sanguine about some of this than others. This catastrophic cock-up—and it was a cock-up, not a criminal event—is a direct consequence of us getting involved in a war in which we should never have got involved in the first place, which we did not have the political will to see through, despite all the efforts of our gallant military, and which left the country in a worse state than it was when we arrived. If it were a one-off, it would perhaps be understandable, but this is a pattern of British policy over the years, from Iraq to Afghanistan and, of course, to Libya. I express a little prayer that we have learned the lessons of that deeper malaise.

I think that we all need to learn lessons from anything that has happened in our history, whatever steps or decisions have been taken. The only thing I would say is that non-decisions and not doing anything also have consequences. It is about balance, and that is a debate and discussion that needs to happen. In terms of the content of today’s debate and future debates, the concentration has to be on what we do both to learn the lessons of what happened under the ARAP scheme and to make sure that we protect as many as possible of the people who stood with us in Afghanistan, whatever the rights and wrongs of that conflict.

My Lords, further to the point raised earlier by a noble Lord opposite about the lies, misinformation and fake news being spread, let us not pussyfoot around: it is by Nigel Farage and other members of Reform UK. Can the Minister confirm that this could actually put some of the people concerned in further danger?

My noble friend makes a really good point. Let us be clear: these are people who stood with us, fought with us and, in many cases, died with us. I think that the British public understand and welcome that. By the end of this scheme, some 56,000 applicants under ARAP, plus their family members, will have been relocated to this country. There is some difficulty in terms of transition when they originally arrive, and so on and so forth—where they are placed and as they assimilate into society—but my understanding is that the British public understand that and are generally very supportive of these people. They are not asylum seekers. They are people who have come to our country because they stood with us; that is an important distinction to make. The answer to those who would exploit that is to stand up to them and say, “You’re wrong. You’re actually not right. You are not speaking for the British people. The British people understand what we are doing and why we are doing it with respect to Afghanistan”, and so on and so forth. As I said to the noble Lord, making allegations and aspersions about all those who have been resettled under the Afghanistan scheme—“They’re all like this, they’re all like that”—is a total nonsense and not true. That is what I think the majority of people in this country think. Let me say this: if there is an individual who has raped somebody, stolen from somebody, or worse, that person, whether they are an Afghan or not, should be prosecuted in the courts and sent to jail. I say again, as I said to the noble Lord, that, if the said person has evidence of it, they should go to the police and get them prosecuted, because that is what the British public want as well.

My Lords, before I call further business, some noble Lords might wish to take this opportunity to leave.