‘Am I going bonkers?' Judge attacks government cover-up of Afghan leak

Telegraph

15-07-2025

'Am I going bonkers?' Those were the words of a High Court judge as he discovered the full extent of the government cover-up of a secret immigration scheme.
Mr Justice Chamberlain had just been told that £6 billion of public spending (now £7 billion) was being hidden with the use of an unprecedented superinjunction.
While the cover-up was ostensibly to protect thousands of Afghans who had helped the British Government, as well as their families, ministers also appeared to be trying to protect themselves.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, said in one memo seen by the court that: ' Political and reputational considerations ' had been a key factor informing the Government's response.
For the first time in British history, a government had used the courts to prevent anyone – and in particular the media and MPs – from revealing not only what they were up to, but the very existence of the court proceedings.
Mr Justice Chamberlain recognised it for what it was: an unparalleled assault on free speech and, as one barrister put it, a way for ministers to 'deliberately mislead the public'.
Superinjunctions, more commonly obtained by footballers to shut down reporting of extra-marital affairs, were 'interferences with freedom of expression which take place under the radar', the judge said, and when the Government obtained one it was: 'Likely to give rise to understandable suspicion that the court's processes are being used for the purposes of censorship.'
Mr Justice Chamberlain rightly observed that the injunction – granted by another judge in September 2023 – was 'completely shutting down' democratic accountability and decided to lift it, only for the Court of Appeal to overrule him.
He said it was 'the first contra mundum superinjunction ever granted'. The Latin phrase for 'against the whole world' explains what the court order meant.
Instead of being granted against a named individual, or news organisation, anyone at all who learnt of the leak was banned from talking about it under threat of imprisonment.
Grant Shapps had been granted the injunction on his second day as defence secretary, after journalists approached the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to comment on a story about a vast data breach that exposed the identities and addresses of Afghan soldiers seeking asylum in the UK.
Rishi Sunak's government decided the public must not find out about a secret plan to offer 24,000 Afghans asylum.
It argued that lives would be at risk if the media or Parliament revealed the existence of the leak, or the asylum scheme that followed, because the Taliban would be alerted to the existence of the list and would target those who had helped the US-led coalition before its withdrawal in 2021.
Instead of being in place for four months – as originally requested while the MoD organised an airlift of those affected – the Sunak government, and then the Labour government that replaced it in 2024, kept the injunction in place for nearly two years.
During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers' reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government's lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an 'agreed narrative' in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.
The judge warned that: 'Open justice is a cardinal constitutional principle, from which derogations can be justified only in exceptional circumstances,' and as the case wore on over the course of dozens of hearings, it became clear that he felt that definition was not being met.
Tom Forster KC, who was appointed by the judge as a special advocate to challenge the Government in court, told him the lack of scrutiny had put 'the democratic process in the deep freeze'.
In February last year, he invited journalists from media organisations that knew about the leak (and who had been threatened with jail if they reported it) to question Natalie Moore, a senior MoD official, at a hearing held behind closed doors.
The journalists pointed out that the issue could affect the forthcoming general election and made the case anew for the public to be told the truth.
By May last year – before the election – the judge's patience had run out. He ruled that the 'continued stifling of public debate' could no longer be justified and said the injunction was 'closing off public debate on an issue of profound moral and economic significance'.
The MoD immediately appealed, hiring one of the country's most eminent barristers, Sir James Eadie KC, at taxpayers' expense. He persuaded the Court of Appeal to overrule Mr Justice Chamberlain and keep the injunction in place.
In October, a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – and attended by Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, Mr Healey, the Defence Secretary, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the Lord Chancellor – decided provisionally to expand the asylum scheme.
By then, the projected costs had increased to £6 billion, and at another hearing last November, when Mr Justice Chamberlain was told how much public spending was being concealed, he spluttered: 'I am starting to doubt myself – am I going bonkers, because it really is £6 billion?'
He added: 'When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa.
'It's not secret intelligence programmes, it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening…the basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.'
'Provide cover'
Ms Moore told the court a statement would be made to Parliament to 'provide cover' for why so many Afghans were arriving in Britain.
A government briefing paper shown to the court said that ministers wanted to 'control the narrative' and use a 'robust public comms strategy' to set out 'the scale but not the cause' of the Afghans arriving.
The judge said: 'How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now seeing how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative.'
He added: 'It is a very, very striking thing.'
Mr Healey made a statement to Parliament in December in which mention was made of the resettlement scheme, followed by another statement earlier this month saying the scheme had ended.
Last week the Government decided that the threat to Afghan lives was 'less than previously thought', and that the superinjunction might actually have made the situation worse.
It paved the way for the injunction to be lifted – and for the media to finally tell the truth to the public – after being gagged for 683 days.