
Downing Street defends defence secretary after accusations he misled parliament
Number 10 said the Defence Secretary's statement to the Commons, in which he said that 'to the best of my knowledge' no serving armed forces personnel were put at risk by the breach, was 'accurate.'
Opposition critics have demanded the minister 'correct the record' after it emerged days later that MI6 spies and members of the SAS were among those named in a list emailed out 'in error' February 2022.
Asked whether Mr Healey had misled MPs, a Number 10 spokesperson said: 'I believe it was an accurate statement.'
They said the Government is 'committed to transparency' and 'in terms of security of our personnel, we take that extremely seriously, particularly those in sensitive positions'.
"Today I'm announcing a change in government policy," said Defence Secretary John Healey as he disclosed the formerly secret resettlement scheme.
The accusations follow the revelation that in 2022 thousands of people began being secretly relocated to the UK from Afghanistan after a data breach from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) risked their lives.
A dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) was released "in error" by a defence official.
The scheme is understood to have cost around £400 million so far, with a projected cost once completed of around £850 million.
Millions more are expected to be paid in legal costs and compensation.
This information came to light after a superinjunction prohibiting its reporting was lifted by the high court on Tuesday.
It emerged days later that the leaked information also included the names of around 100 British spies and special forces officers names.
Speaking on Friday, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: 'Three days ago John Healey claimed no-one serving in the armed forces was put at risk by the data breach. Today we found out that appears to be false.
'We need to know if any serving members of the armed forces were impacted – and the Defence Secretary must urgently come before Parliament to answer the question of whether he knowingly misled MPs and the public.'
Meanwhile, former Conservative ministers have sought to distance themselves from the handling of the breach after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said members of the previous government had 'serious questions to answer' over their handling of the leak.
Speaking Friday morning, former Defence Secretary Sir Grant Shapps said he had kept the superinjunction in place in order to 'save lives' and err 'on the side of extreme caution."
Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about his handling of the issue he claimed he, "would do the same thing all over again," in order to save lives.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
11 minutes ago
- The Independent
Poll reveals the one major reason Britons aren't having children
Nearly half of British adults are putting off or deciding against having children, with money worries a top factor, a stark new poll reveals. A survey of 18 to 50-year-olds from pollsters Ipsos, shared exclusively with The Independent , shows that 44 per cent of adults plan to delay having children, or are deciding against it altogether – with the cost of raising children, including food, clothing and education, cited as the most common reason (39 per cent). And a third of prospective parents said they were put off by the cost of childcare in the UK – despite the government's rollout of extended free nursery hours. While a third of respondents said they weren't having children because they simply didn't want to, others said they were put off by fears over climate change, with worries over how global warming will affect their child's future, and how having children may harm the environment. The poll comes as birth rates in England and Wales are at their lowest rate on record, and as deaths are expected to consistently outnumber births in the UK from 2030. Lord Michael Farmer, a vocal supporter of family stability, criticised the systemic issues underlying low birth rates and argued that parents needed more financial support. 'The UK's tax system discourages childbearing; it is one of the least family-friendly in the OECD. No allowances are made for dependants, so our tax system also disadvantages single parents. The current level of marriage allowance gives scant recognition of low-earning or non-earning second parents,' he said in a House of Lords debate in November. In 2023, more people died than were born in the UK. This gap is only expected to widen between 2030 and 2050, according to projections from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This means that the majority of population growth is driven by immigration rather than births. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson told The Independent in June that the steep decline in birth rates is 'a big challenge' for the UK, which needs to be addressed. She added: 'I've heard from lots of people that the choices that they wanted to make have been constrained, in terms of when to start a family and how many children they have, by factors like the cost of childcare, housing costs, instability at work.' Fertility rates are shrinking faster than in any other G7 nation, falling by 25 per cent in the UK since 2010. However, women are still having slightly more children on average than those in Japan, Italy and Canada. Despite advancements in flexible working and parental leave, some parents polled said they believed that it is harder to raise children now than in previous generations, with the cost of living and the price of housing increasing beyond pay. The majority of adults (56 per cent) believe it is harder to be a parent in the UK today than 20 years ago, with 61 per cent of women saying it was harder to raise a child now compared to men (52 per cent). And even older generations agreed, with those aged 55 to 75-year-olds the most likely to believe (59 per cent) that parenthood is trickier now than two decades ago. The decline in birth rates has generated much discussion among politicians. Recently, Nigel Farage pledged he would abolish the two-child benefit cap if Reform came into power, as part of a '180-degree shift' to reverse low birth rates. But his stance has not yet fully won over the public, who still trust Labour more than any other party to support parents and families, according to Ipsos' poll. This is in spite of Sir Keir Starmer's refusal to remove the two-child benefit cap, after pledging to reduce child poverty, which sparked public rebellion among Labour MPs. Meanwhile, the Tories are less trusted to support families than both Reform and Labour. The party's current leader, Kemi Badenoch, has previously said she believes maternity pay is 'excessive', and that 'families on benefits should make the same responsible decisions about having children as everyone else'. But more than 1 in 5 people said that they don't trust any major party to support families with their policies. Tackling affordable housing is the most popular policy change, which would lead to people having more children, according to 42 per cent of Ipsos respondents. The cost of renting in Britain has now reached new record highs, according to Rightmove , with average asking rent at £1,365 per month. Meanwhile, fewer young people are buying homes, as housing prices are far outpacing wage growth. Over 1 in 3 adults also believe that making childcare more affordable for parents with preschool children would incentivise more people to have children. The government has rolled out 15 hours of free childcare to children aged nine months to two years old, which from September will be extended to 30 hours of childcare a week. However, recent calculations from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, revealed by The Independent, show that uptake is likely to be 25 per cent higher than expected, and since the number of childcare places has barely increased in recent years, it will be a struggle for many to secure places. Improving access to free nursery hours will no doubt be a welcome move, since full-time childcare on average costs between 37 to 43 per cent of the average income in the UK.


The Independent
11 minutes ago
- The Independent
Why has it been so difficult for Britain to recognise the state of Palestine?
Keir Starmer's determination to recognise the state of Palestine begs a simple question. Not so much 'Why?' – for decades, a two-state solution that would see a Palestinian homeland established in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem has been the policy of successive UK governments, and one that was voted for, overwhelmingly, in the Commons 11 years ago. But, rather, how today's announcement following an emergency meeting of the Cabinet, that the British government – exasperated by the ongoing situation in Gaza and the dwindling prospects of a two-state solution with Israel – will formally recognise Palestine in September, could have been quite so long in the making. Britain has played a pivotal role in the pre-history of the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict, starting with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The then-British foreign secretary's letter to Lord Rothschild promising support for a 'national home for the Jewish people' set our seal on a future Israeli state. While many Palestinians understandably see the Declaration as the root of all their travails, it was intended as a classic diplomatic fudge. It did not actually specify that it would mean a Jewish state in what was then still a division of the Ottoman Empire, but which would soon be under British control following General Allenby's victory over the Turks in the First World War. Moreover, Balfour promised that 'nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine' – which is a quaint way of describing the existing, and then overwhelmingly Arab, population of Palestine. Nor did it say how this protection would be achieved. But none of this alters the fact that, more than a century later, this proviso is the the Balfour Declaration's great unfinished business. Fast forward to May 1948. The declaration of an independent state of Israel by its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, following the hasty abandonment of territory mandated to British control in 1920 by the League of Nations, and coupled with the Israeli army's successful defence against immediate invasion by five neighbouring Arab states, left the new nation in control of 78 per cent of what had once been British-administered Mandatory Palestine. The Balfour Declaration – along with the United Nations decision to divide the territory into two states, one Arab and one Jewish – would prove pivotal in creating a conflict that still scars the Middle East. But it is subsequent events that explain why formal recognition of an independent, sovereign state of Palestine has still not yet happened. For more than half a century, Western governments – Britain included – have said that there should be a Palestinian state that encompasses Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But in 1967, when the Six Day War broke out with its neighbours, Israel seized the former territory from Egypt and the latter two others from Jordan. The subsequent UN Resolution 242 called for Israel to withdraw in return for recognition by Arab states – but neither the pullback nor the recognition ever came to pass. At that point in time, Palestinians still hankered after sovereignty over the whole of historic 'Palestine' – including what had already been the state of Israel for almost 20 years, and from which more than 700,000 Palestinians had been forced to flee, in a displacement and dispossession known as the Nakba, meaning 'catastrophe' in Arabic. Israel, far from withdrawing from the territorial gains made during conflicts, has set up settlements, meaning that at least 620,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Several of the most extreme members of the Netanyahu government are eager to resettle Gaza in the same way. In 1988, there was a dramatic change of thinking within the then-Palestinian leadership – it's so-called 'historic compromise'. Led by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation would confine its aspiration to sovereignty over the territories occupied in 1967. All negotiations that have taken place since then – at Oslo in 1993, at Camp David in 2000, and between Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas as part of a secret realignment plan that was never implemented – have envisaged, to some degree, a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side. Shortly after Arafat's historic compromise, 78 countries recognised the new Palestinian state. Today, the number declaring formal recognition stands at 147. Earlier this month – more than a decade after Sweden became the first EU country to formally acknowledge Palestinian sovereignty, a move followed last year by Ireland, Spain and Norway – the French president Emmanuel Macron became the first leader of a G7 country to promise he will seek to do the same at the UN General Assembly in September. As critics of recognition frequently, and correctly, point out; acknowledging a state of Palestine that includes the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem is essentially notional, since, in the absence of a successful peace process, there is no state to recognise. Though the Palestinian Authority was granted observer status at the United Nations in 2012, along similar lines to that afforded to the Vatican, it has no voting rights. Moreover, the United States has consistently used its veto to block Palestine's full UN membership. As recently as April, the UK abstained in a Security Council resolution vote on the recommendation regarding the admission of Palestine into the UN. Nevertheless, France's move – which paved the way for today's announcement of a road map by Keir Starmer, which is supported by Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz – is not an empty one. It registered growing outrage at the carnage, and the scale of the famine, perpetrated by Israel in Gaza in retaliation for brutal attacks by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took another 251 hostages. The French president is said to have been especially affected by his conversations with Palestinian survivors when he visited Egypt in April. France joining with Saudi Arabia in sponsoring the UN summit currently underway in New York to revive talks into a two-state solution sends a clear political message to Israel's leadership. It is also a reminder that, since 2002, Riyadh has promised to recognise Israel – as Egypt and Jordan have already done – but only if it agrees to a return to pre-1967 borders. Will Britain's belated recognition of a state of Palestine make any difference? It will certainly lend weight and credence to those hoping to change minds in Washington. It would also go some way as an acknowledgement of the UK's historic role and duty in the region. And we can only hope that it might help solve a conflict in which the destruction, killing and starvation in Gaza is but the latest – and direst – consequence.


BreakingNews.ie
12 minutes ago
- BreakingNews.ie
UK will recognise Palestine in September unless Israel ‘takes steps' over Gaza
The UK will recognise the state of Palestine 'in September' unless Israel takes 'substantive steps' to end the 'appalling situation in Gaza', Keir Starmer has told his Cabinet. The British Prime Minister recalled the Government from their summer recess to discuss the situation. Advertisement According to a readout of the Cabinet meeting issued by Downing Street, Starmer told ministers 'now was the right time to move this position' on the two-state solution. The read out went on: 'He said that because of the increasingly intolerable situation in Gaza and the diminishing prospect of a peace process towards a two-state solution, now was the right time to move this position forward. 'He said that the UK will recognise the state of Palestine in September, before UNGA (UN General Assembly), unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution.' It comes after the British Prime Minister had been under increasing pressure to recognise Palestine amid the warnings of starvation in Gaza. Advertisement