FLASH
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The events can be reported for the first time after the Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted an unprecedented global injunction that had silenced the press since September 2023.
The UK government set up a secret multi-billion pound scheme to resettle thousands of Afghans in Britain after a data leak put them at risk of reprisal from the Taliban, and silenced the media with a super-injunction.
The names, contact information and other personal details of around 25,000 Afghans, people who worked closely with the United Kingdom before the Taliban took power, and some of their family members, were accidentally revealed by a British soldier in emails in February 2022.
The highly sensitive database leak was not discovered until August 2023, when it was mentioned in a Facebook group. The government estimated that around 100,000 people were put at risk when other family members were also included. It also contained email addresses belonging to UK government officials. In response, ministers in Rishi Sunak’s former Conservative government launched a secret scheme to bring Afghans to the UK.
The plan, as of February this year, under the current Labour administration of Sir Keir Starmer, was to relocate 25,000 people, at a potential cost of £7 billion, according to a government estimate. In recent weeks, as the High Court in London took steps towards lifting the veil on the matter, the government halted the scheme.
British intelligence had previously assessed that the breach had put Afghans at risk of killing, torture, harassment and intimidation by the Taliban. The Ministry of Defence said this month that a new review of threats in Afghanistan had found that the risk to Afghans still in the country was lower than previously thought.
Despite the £7bn estimate revealed in court proceedings, MoD officials said this week that the direct costs of the leak had been estimated at only around £2bn and that the bill for secret evacuations would now be much lower because the number of eligible Afghans had been reduced.
The revelations come at a time when Britain's public finances are under severe pressure and the anti-immigration opposition party, Reform UK, is leading the country's main establishment parties in the polls. The High Court has been told that civil servants have warned of the risk of "public order disruption" in response to news of the secret relocation plan, which comes a year after far-right riots last summer.
To date, the UK government has resettled around 18,500 Afghans affected by the data breach in Britain. The Ministry of Defence said most were already eligible under an existing pathway. Officials said only 5,500 people were resettled directly as a result of the breach, with at least 2,400 more expected to arrive.
Defence Secretary John Healey announced the closure of the secret scheme, known as the Afghan Response Pathway, to new applicants in a statement to the House of Commons on Tuesday. Earlier this month, the government also abruptly closed public schemes, known as the Afghan Resettlement and Assistance Policy (ARAP) and the Afghan National Resettlement Scheme.
"This serious data incident should never have happened. It may have happened three years ago under the previous government, but to all those whose data was compromised, I offer my sincere apology today on behalf of the British government ," Healey told MPs.
The events can be reported for the first time after the Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted an unprecedented global injunction that had silenced the press since September 2023. The super-injunction was the first ever issued by the British government.
But a new interim order granted by the Supreme Court until at least next week means that even now the essential details explaining the severity of the incident cannot be released.
The database was a detailed register of individuals who had applied, in most cases unsuccessfully, under the public Arap scheme, which offered resettlement to the UK for those at risk of reprisals for working for or alongside the UK before the Taliban regained power.
UK combat operations ended in Afghanistan in 2014 after 13 years, but British troops stayed until a chaotic western withdrawal in 2021 that allowed the Taliban to return. The UK government did not reveal the data leak until an anonymous person posted screenshots of the spreadsheet on Facebook in August 2023 and threatened to reveal the entire database.
One of the people familiar with the breach said the database had been sold, at least once, for a five-figure sum.
They alleged that one of the Afghan recipients used possession of the database as a means of pressuring the government to relocate them and 14 family members to the UK.
The identity of the soldier, or whether he has been sanctioned, has not been revealed by the Ministry of Defence. The department has not successfully contained the leak and it is not known whether the Taliban obtained the list. More than 665 Afghans have launched a class action lawsuit to sue the MoD over the data breach, seeking at least £50,000 each, with thousands more likely to join the lawsuit once they learn of the incident and their potential exposure./ Adapted from "Pamphlet" by "FinancialTimes"
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