Grant Shapps: I'd gag Afghan data leak again to save lives
The court order, which was lifted on Tuesday, prevented parliament and the public from knowing about a data breach that put up to 100,000 Afghans at risk.
The data breach happened when a British soldier trying to verify Afghan applications to come to the UK mistakenly sent the entire database of 33,000 records to Afghans in the UK. The list was then sent on to people in Afghanistan.
• UK special forces, MI6 spies and military officers named in Afghan data leak
Shapps, who became defence secretary in August 2023 shortly before the superinjunction was imposed, said: 'Faced with the decision of protecting lives — both Brits and Afghanis — I would do the same thing all over again. I would walk over hot coals.'
Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, the former Conservative minister said the injunction had been applied by his predecessor, Ben Wallace, 'quite rightly, in my view', and came into place as he came into office. 'And it is the case that I thought that once the superinjunction was in place, it should remain as a superinjunction,' he added.
Shapps said: 'And I'll tell you what, anybody sat behind the desk that I was sat in as defence secretary and faced with the choice of whether that list would get out and people would be pursued, murdered and executed as a result of it, or doing something to try and save those lives, I'd much rather now be in this interview explaining why a superinjunction was required than being in this interview explaining why I failed to act and people were murdered.'
He added that 'the public understands that there are times where you simply have to act in the most maximalist way in order to stop people from being murdered and executed, and that is, quite simply, what properly happened in this case.'
• The Times view: Urgent parliamentary scrutiny on Afghan data breach is needed
The former MP for Welwyn Hatfield insisted that his focus as defence secretary was on 'sorting out the mess and saving lives' and 'making sure the systems were in place which frankly should have always been in place to make sure this sort of sensitive information could never be sent on'.
But he said he was 'surprised' the gagging order remained in place for 'so long'.
He said: 'My expectation was, as the risks start to lessen over time and people are removed from the theatre, from Afghanistan, and measures are taken to protect the Brits on the list … I'd thought that it was probably going to come to an end last summer, the autumn perhaps at maximum.'
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