I've fought the secret state for decades. Afghan scandal is no surprise

Times

19-07-2025

One of the things that struck me most noticeably when moving to the UK from the US in 1997 was the secrecy of the state toward its citizens. Having worked as a crime reporter in America, I discovered that most of the public records and information I used to do my job were actually illegal to access in the UK.
I found the secrecy wasn't unique to law enforcement but rather a default attitude among officials. It didn't matter if I were asking for details of food hygiene inspections, parliamentary expenses or police reports, the attitude was the same. A kind of disbelief and then a patronising disdain, by which I was meant to understand that it was not my 'place' as a mere citizen — or subject as I learnt was the UK term — to ask for a full accounting from agents of the state.
Instead, I should silently let officials get on with the important business of making decisions in my name and with my money. 'Put up, shut up' seemed to be the norm. This didn't strike me as particularly democratic.
I remember battling in 2004 with the Highways Agency, now known as Highways England, just to get contact information for its new freedom of information officer. I was putting together a book, Your Right to Know, about people's new rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) 2000 that was coming into force in 2005. I thought it would be a game-changer for British democracy and I wanted to include contact details for the new FOI units in public agencies.
I was used to naming public officials. In America it was no big deal; anonymity was only used if there was a valid reason. But you would have thought I'd asked for nuclear codes such was the shock and pushback I received to this simple request. The idea of providing actual names was anathema and I began to wonder who was the master here, and who the servant.
The more I researched my book, the angrier I became. With all the idealism and arrogance of youth, I set out on behalf of the beleaguered British citizen to bring transparency to this secretive and feudal country, training hundreds of journalists to use the FOI Act and making requests myself.
The result is probably one you know, when a five-year legal battle culminated in a High Court victory in 2008. I'm talking, of course, about MPs' expenses. Yet even after the court ruling, MPs still refused to publish their full expenses, arguing the public couldn't be trusted with the raw data and so it had to be 'redacted' at great expense and time.
• MPs demand to know why they were kept in the dark over Afghan leak
The months dragged on while MPs tried to find ways to exempt themselves from their own FOI law. It wasn't until a year later that full details were finally revealed, after an insider who worked in the room where the data was being redacted leaked the full list to the highest bidder on Fleet Street.
The civilian employee said he leaked details of the claims because he was angry that, at the same time MPs were secretively claiming for plasma televisions and duck houses, Britain's armed forces in Afghanistan were having to work two jobs just to buy body armour and other vital equipment.
A lot has changed since then but not, it seems, the British state's penchant for secrecy. Or the military's supercilious way of dealing with people in Afghanistan.
Last week it was revealed that for two years the government used wide-ranging powers to prevent UK media reporting on a data leak of the names of 19,000 Afghans who had applied to move to the UK after the Taliban seized power in 2021. These included interpreters and military assistants who trusted the Ministry of Defence with their personal details and those of their families. Instead of those people being notified they were on a 'kill list', the MoD opted instead to try to lock down all knowledge of the leak.
This is how authoritarian states are used to controlling information, but it's become much harder in the digital age. And indeed, while the MoD was successful in gagging the press, the information continued to flow online.
As one of the Afghans, a woman known as Person A, told The Times: 'Lives could have been saved if everyone had been told about the leak back in August 2023. It would have enabled them to flee into Iran or Pakistan, which would have bought them some time. These families trusted the MoD and sat waiting for evacuation.'
• Larisa Brown: I investigated the Afghan data leak. Ministers were gambling with death
The MoD did eventually relocate 7,000 Afghan nationals to the UK, which cost about £850 million of taxpayer money. These were not always the Afghans most in danger, however, but rather those most likely to spread awareness of the leak.
The privacy injunction, initially granted for only four months on September 1, 2023, meant there could be no public scrutiny or parliamentary oversight of this decision. The MoD claimed it needed this unprecedented secrecy to get those most in danger out of Afghanistan. But this did not happen, and instead it sought longer and longer extensions. In fact, it was only later, after media court action, that the MoD began relocating Afghans in large numbers. The superinjunction was lifted only on July 15 this year.
Secrecy, in the hands of the powerful, is too easy a tool to abuse. The distance from protection to cover-up is short, and a tool initially intended to help can quickly morph into causing harm. That's why it should never be a default for anyone in power, but rather an exception.
When I was appointed to the Independent Surveillance Review panel, a group convened in 2014 by the deputy prime minister at the time, Nick Clegg, to look at the legality, effectiveness and privacy implications of mass government surveillance, I saw how the former heads of the intelligence agencies were often blind to the dangers of secrecy. They had a faith in officialdom that I didn't share.
Where they saw officials using secrecy only for the good of the people, I saw a tool easily abused to hide mistakes, cover up embarrassments and accrue power that corrodes democracy.
Such an abuse of secrecy is clear from the Afghan data leak. Instead of owning the mistake and fixing it, the MoD wasted considerable public money to hide the breach for two years, putting many Afghans in harm's way. Secrecy used in this way is not for the protection of the people, but the protection of the powerful. It's about preserving the reputations of officials at all costs.
The MoD's use of a worldwide gagging order to cover up its mistake makes it clear that such injunctions have no place in a democracy. The press has a hard enough time getting basic information out of the British state, it shouldn't have to fight battles in secret courts as well.
Heather Brooke is an investigative journalist and the author of The Revolution Will Be Digitised