It is difficult to fully get one’s head around revelations of the super-injunction preventing the public – and MPs – from discovering that a data-breach in early 2022 put tens of thousand of Afghan lives at risk from the Taliban. Both the scale of the debacle – a spreadsheet full of highly sensitive data accidentally sent by an unnamed “defence official” to the wrong recipients – and the scale of the cover-up, in the form of an unprecedented two-year super-injunction and a secret resettlement scheme with a price-tag in the billions, are jaw-dropping.
After the court order was lifted at noon, Defence Secretary John Healey made a statement to the commons – and you could see the shock on the faces of MPs across the House. The unanswered questions kept coming. Which individual was responsible? Were they still in their post? Was £7bn really earmarked for the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) to safely resettle those affected by the leak? And could the government confirm that any Afghan who had assisted the British armed forces and was therefore in danger had been or could be rescued and repatriated to the UK?
It is the job of a minister to fend off these sorts of challenging questions – and on issues of life and death where there has been a government failure of this magnitude, such scrutiny is vital. But watching Healey in the spotlight, it was hard not to feel a touch of sympathy for him, and for the Labour government thrown once more into a tailspin just a week before the summer recess.
This is not a crisis of Labour’s making. The data leak occurred in February 2022, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. It has been reported that the government only learned of the breach in August 2023, when Rishi Sunak was at the helm. The super-injunction was requested when Grant Shapps was Defence Secretary; the resettlement scheme covertly planned out during the Foreign Secretary tenures of James Cleverly and David Cameron.
And yet it is Keir Starmer and John Healey holding this long-unexploded grenade at the crucial moment when it has blown up.
The Labour government is not devoid of culpability. Despite Healey’s insistence in the chamber today that “No government wishes to withhold information from the British public, from parliamentarians or the press in this manner,” under his watch the MoD continued to do just that, by requesting that the super-injunction remain in place. It was only abandoned after an independent review into the dangers involved concluded not just that the risks had diminished but that the insistence on secrecy could in fact have made them worse. The government also chose to push ahead with the resettlement scheme drawn up by the Tories, with Rachel Reeves signing it off in October. Different choices were presumably available (although they would have come with their own risks and consequences).
Yet amid all the justifiable horror and outrage, it should not be forgotten that this was a scandal that occurred during a Conservative government, that has now landed on Labour’s desk to clean up. Healey told the House today that, as shadow defence secretary, he was informed of the resettlement scheme and issued with the super-injunction in December 2023, but that “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 super-injunction on taking office after the general election”, at which time the scheme was fully established. As he spoke, Luke Pollard, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for the armed forces who was sitting beside him, started nodding vigorously, his eyes wide in memory of that a meeting that must have seemed utterly beyond belief to a new minister.
This is the latest in a long line of time-bombs inherited from the Tories – hidden traps the new government has stumbled into that began years ago only came into the spotlight after the election. In addition to the state of the public finances (over which the parties are still squabbling), we can add: the over-crowded prisons that threatened to overflow weeks after the election, the crisis in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) funding, the fall-out from the decades-long grooming gangs. Then there are all the compensation schemes for historic injustices, from the Post Office to infected blood – consequences of governments long-gone, the can for which was kicked into the future by a line of ministers hoping it would be someone else’s problem by the time the public demanded actions. Every time the government hopes to have won itself some breathing room, a new landmine goes off.
Today, Healey offered in sombre tones his “sincere apology” to all those whose information was compromised. The shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge, a defence minister when the super-injunction was first requested and the resettlement scheme planned, added his own apology to those affected. The Conservatives will not be opposing the government’s decision to conclude the ARR. But the fall-out from this catastrophic failure – the costs of the scheme and of the lawsuit already in the works, to say nothing of the revelations that may emerge if it transpires deaths occurred due to the breach – will be Labour’s to manage. And the blame if it is mismanaged in any way will be laid firmly at Labour’s door.
[Further reading: A glimpse of the Taliban at work]
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