Latest news with #AfghanDataLeak
The Independent
21-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Afghan data leak inquiry to be conducted by Parliament's security watchdog
An inquiry into the Afghan data leak that led to an unprecedented legal gagging order and an £850 million secret relocation scheme is set to be carried out by Parliament's intelligence watchdog. Lord Beamish, chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), said the cross-party group would launch a probe after considering defence assessment documents related to the case. The peer has previously voiced concern over 'serious constitutional issues' raised by the handling of the breach that saw the details of 18,714 applicants for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme released in 2022. The leak prompted an unprecedented superinjunction amid fears the Taliban could target would-be refugees for reprisals, meaning the ISC, which routinely reviews sensitive material, was not briefed. It also saw the establishment of a secret scheme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), to bring some of those affected to the UK at a projected final cost of about £850 million. In a statement on Monday, Lord Beamish said the committee 'has agreed that, once it has considered the requested material, it will conduct an inquiry into the intelligence community's role and activity in connection with the loss of data relating to Arap applicants in February 2022'. The Ministry of Defence said it had been instructed by Defence Secretary John Healey to give 'its full support' to the committee. The ISC, which is made up of MPs and peers, had asked for the release of defence assessments that formed the basis of the superinjunction, as well as other material relating to the Arap scheme. It hard argued that under the Justice and Security Act 2013, classification of material is not grounds on which information can be withheld from the committee, given its purpose is to scrutinise the work of the UK intelligence community. Thousands of Afghans included on the list of people trying to flee the Taliban are unlikely to receive compensation after their details were accidentally leaked. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the Government would 'robustly defend' any legal action or bid for compensation, adding these were 'hypothetical claims'. It has also been reported that the MoD will not proactively offer compensation to those affected. In total, the Government expects 6,900 people to be brought to the UK under the ARR scheme, which was introduced under the previous Tory administration after a defence official leaked the data 'in error' in February 2022. Along with the Afghan nationals, the breach saw details of more than 100 British officials compromised, including special forces and MI6 personnel. An MoD spokesman said: 'The Government strongly welcomes the Intelligence and Security Committee's scrutiny of the Afghan data incident. 'We recognise the urgent need to understand how these significant failures happened and ensure there's proper accountability for the previous government's handling of this matter. 'The Ministry of Defence has been instructed by the Defence Secretary to give its full support to the ISC and all parliamentary committees. If incumbent ministers and officials are asked to account and give evidence, they will. 'We have restored proper parliamentary accountability and scrutiny for the decisions that the department takes and the spending that we commit on behalf of the taxpayer.'
The Independent
21-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Inquiry into Afghan data leak to be conducted by Parliament's security watchdog
An inquiry into the Afghan data leak that led to an unprecedented legal gagging order and an £850 million secret relocation scheme is set to be carried out by Parliament's intelligence watchdog. Lord Beamish, chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), said the cross-party group would launch a probe after considering defence assessment documents related to the case. The peer has previously voiced concern over 'serious constitutional issues' raised by the handling of the breach that saw the details of 18,714 applicants for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme released in 2022. The leak prompted an unprecedented superinjunction amid fears the Taliban could target would-be refugees for reprisals, meaning the ISC, which routinely reviews sensitive material, was not briefed. It also saw the establishment of a secret scheme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), to bring some of those affected to the UK at a projected final cost of about £850 million. In a statement on Monday, Lord Beamish said the committee 'has agreed that, once it has considered the requested material, it will conduct an inquiry into the intelligence community's role and activity in connection with the loss of data relating to Arap applicants in February 2022'. The ISC, which is made up of MPs and members of the House of Lords, had asked for the release of defence assessments that formed the basis of the superinjunction, as well as other material relating to the Arap scheme. It hard argued that under the Justice and Security Act 2013, classification of material is not grounds on which information can be withheld from the committee, given its purpose is to scrutinise the work of the UK intelligence community. Thousands of Afghans included on the list of people trying to flee the Taliban are unlikely to receive compensation after their details were accidentally leaked. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the Government would 'robustly defend' any legal action or bid for compensation, adding these were 'hypothetical claims'. It has also been reported that the MoD will not proactively offer compensation to those affected. In total, the Government expects 6,900 people to be brought to the UK under the ARR scheme, which was introduced under the previous Tory administration after a defence official leaked the data 'in error' in February 2022. Along with the Afghan nationals, the breach saw details of more than 100 British officials compromised, including special forces and MI6 personnel.
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Inquiry into Afghan data leak to be conducted by Parliament's security watchdog
An inquiry into the Afghan data leak that led to an unprecedented legal gagging order and an £850 million secret relocation scheme is set to be carried out by Parliament's intelligence watchdog. Lord Beamish, chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), said the cross-party group would launch a probe after considering defence assessment documents related to the case. The peer has previously voiced concern over 'serious constitutional issues' raised by the handling of the breach that saw the details of 18,714 applicants for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme released in 2022. The leak prompted an unprecedented superinjunction amid fears the Taliban could target would-be refugees for reprisals, meaning the ISC, which routinely reviews sensitive material, was not briefed. It also saw the establishment of a secret scheme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), to bring some of those affected to the UK at a projected final cost of about £850 million. In a statement on Monday, Lord Beamish said the committee 'has agreed that, once it has considered the requested material, it will conduct an inquiry into the intelligence community's role and activity in connection with the loss of data relating to Arap applicants in February 2022'. The ISC, which is made up of MPs and members of the House of Lords, had asked for the release of defence assessments that formed the basis of the superinjunction, as well as other material relating to the Arap scheme. It hard argued that under the Justice and Security Act 2013, classification of material is not grounds on which information can be withheld from the committee, given its purpose is to scrutinise the work of the UK intelligence community. Thousands of Afghans included on the list of people trying to flee the Taliban are unlikely to receive compensation after their details were accidentally leaked. A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the Government would 'robustly defend' any legal action or bid for compensation, adding these were 'hypothetical claims'. It has also been reported that the MoD will not proactively offer compensation to those affected. In total, the Government expects 6,900 people to be brought to the UK under the ARR scheme, which was introduced under the previous Tory administration after a defence official leaked the data 'in error' in February 2022. Along with the Afghan nationals, the breach saw details of more than 100 British officials compromised, including special forces and MI6 personnel. The Government has been contacted for comment.
Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Data leak was inevitable after Afghan chaos, says whistleblower
The Afghan data leak was 'bound to happen' after ministers ignored warnings about the UK's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, a Foreign Office whistleblower has said. Three years ago, in July 2022 Josie Stewart, 44, a career diplomat, lost her job after giving an anonymous interview to BBC Newsnight, raising the alarm over the government's handling of the crisis. But speaking to The Telegraph after one of the most damaging leaks in British history, she said the scenario was precisely one she had been trying to prevent. Ms Stewart, who was one of only two civil servants to go public with their concerns in 2021, said: 'To some extent it is an endorsement of the fact that we were right – the government's chaotic handling of the Afghanistan evacuation was risking lives. 'But it also brings the realisation that we did all of this in terms of speaking out – in different ways, we both lost our careers because of it – and it didn't change anything. The chaotic management continued, and the suppressed facts continued – and got worse. So much for accountability.' The other civil servant, Raphael Marshall, resigned after a week working on the Afghan Special Cases team, which was helping eligible Afghans at risk because of their UK ties to get evacuated from Kabul following the Taliban takeover. He claimed desperate emails went unread, junior staff with no regional expertise were assigned to complex cases, and the prime minister prioritised animals over people at the 'direct expense' of humans. Ms Stewart, who had volunteered to work on the UK's Afghan crisis response following the fall of Kabul, said she felt morally compelled to speak out. She knew that, as a senior official with 15 years of experience in the Foreign Office, she could corroborate Mr Marshall's account. Speaking about the Afghan data leak, Ms Stewart said: 'The biggest thing for me is just, 'how was it possible that data like this was still [...] being dumped into random spreadsheets and emailed around without proper controls?'. 'And I do know how, because it was a continuation of what I had witnessed first-hand in August and September. And the fact that, despite all the attention, nobody took seriously the need to fix it by February. And then – surprise, surprise – of course this happened.' In December 2021, she gave an anonymous interview to Newsnight supporting Mr Marshall's testimony. But her identity was exposed when a BBC reporter tweeted a photo of a leaked email addressed to Ms Stewart, which had been shared with the reporter for background only. Her security clearance was revoked and she was dismissed. In a landmark tribunal ruling in February, three judges unanimously found the Foreign Office had unfairly sacked her after she leaked information in the public interest. Speaking about her reaction to the story this week, she said: 'I thought, 'This is what happens in such chaos when you fail to take seriously the responsibility of managing vast amounts of the most sensitive personal data there could be.' It's exactly what we were saying was bound to happen, and it did.' 'The next reaction I had, later that evening, was absolute fury. Raphael [...] had gone to the [Foreign Affairs] select committee in September 2021, which was published in December and hit the news. This data leak happened the following February. 'So even though there'd been so much public and political focus by that point on the chaos, the damage and the risk, nothing was done for at least another two months to put proper systems in place that would have stopped this happening. The hubris of it just blows my mind.' In the evidence she gave to the select committee in March 2022, Ms Stewart said: 'I feel a strong sense of moral injury for having been part of something so badly managed, and so focused on managing reputational risk and political fallout rather than the actual crisis and associated human tragedy.' She told The Telegraph she was 'surprised' that more commentators have not drawn a link between the whistleblowers' warnings and this week's revelations that the Government imposed an unprecedented two-year 'contra mundum' super-injunction to suppress details of the breach. 'I'm surprised that so few people within commentary this week have made this link,' Ms Stewart said. 'It's a tricky one, because the risk element is real, I can see the line that this super-injunction was necessary in order to mitigate damage or risk. But it's also very convenient.' 'This is just my own personal view, I wouldn't be confident calling it either way, but in terms of what motivations were from the government's perspective, there are strong parallels. It could have been very convenient for them to have this in place.' Ms Stewart said that she has heard from Afghans who made it to the UK that others they know, who are 'for sure' eligible under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme, remain stuck abroad. 'I know Afghans who have not been able to get any kind of response in relation to their applications, they've not even been able to get an acknowledgement in 14 months.' 'I know of numerous Afghans who are for sure Arap-eligible, but have spent the last three years in Islamabad trying to get responses from the British government. They just haven't got a decision yet on their Arap application, and so they're still there.' When asked why the system was still failing, Ms Stewart blamed indifference at the top of Government. 'The first thing is that nobody cares enough, and so nobody's doing anything about it. The fact that you can't get an answer or even an update on an Arap application in 14 months, and you need to get an MP involved to get one after 14 months. I think there's no resource, there's no political pressure, nobody cares. It's last year's news.'
Telegraph
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Reform have shown they still cannot be taken seriously
They could have enjoyed a nice easy win on the Afghan data leak. As former Tory MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg remarked on the Daily T podcast he co-presented with me on Wednesday: 'This is very helpful for Nigel Farage because Nigel can point to this and say it doesn't matter who you vote for; doesn't matter if it's the Conservatives or Labour – they don't want you to know anything, they don't want you, the people, to know the uniparty wants to protect information. 'So I think this is damaging both for my party and for Labour.' Reform could have simply responded to this shambles by saying: successive governments have not just cocked up but covered up a taxpayer funded scandal that has resulted in thousands of Afghans being granted asylum in the UK. We now don't know whether some of them might actually be Taliban terrorists. Meanwhile, brave Afghans who actually served alongside British troops may have been left behind. This once again highlights an epic establishment failure in which both the Tories and Labour are complicit. If you want to fix this brazen example of broken Britain, then vote for us. But they didn't do that. Instead, they succeeded in striking an extraordinary own goal by once again descending into petty point scoring on social media. Clouded, as ever, by their desire to 'destroy the Conservatives' – even the ones they agree with – they decided to turn their guns on former home secretary Suella Braverman and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick. Chairman Zia Yusuf, who seems to be developing a dangerous habit of tweeting before thinking, led the charge, posting: 'When the Tories were booted out of office the public didn't even know of their worst crime. That two of their 'good ones' were Home Sec and Immigration Minister when the government got a super injunction is a poetic irony. RIP the Tory Party.' Their worst crime? How ridiculous. Yes, this was a gargantuan blunder, and I cannot for the life of me understand why an injunction was imposed in the first place when the original D-Notice, a non-legal agreement with the press not to publish information related to national security, might have sufficed. There was certainly no need for the imposition of a superinjunction, which prohibits disclosure not only of the underlying information but also of the existence of the order itself, not least for what Defence Secretary John Healey later admitted in an internal memo were 'political and reputational considerations'. Taxpayers now face footing the bill for hefty compensation claims by those on the list, of which 23,900 will be relocated to the UK at enormous cost. But is Yusuf seriously suggesting that no measures whatsoever should have been taken to protect those named from being killed by the Taliban? I'm not just referring to around 1,200 brave Afghans who served as badged members of the CF333 and CF444 – the 'Triples' – alongside British troops. What about the spies and members of the SAS and SBS whose personal details were also exposed? Yusuf claims that 'Ministers who knew about the Afghan scandal had immunity from the super injunction' but that's not quite right. The absolute privilege for freedom of speech, granted by Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1688, places a significant responsibility on parliamentarians to exercise it in the public interest. Moreover, the sub judice rule may also have applied in this case because court proceedings were ongoing – the MoD had appealed to the Court of Appeal. As well as posting countless messages on social media, Yusuf has taken to the airwaves to describe it as 'probably the biggest scandal, biggest political cover up, certainly in my lifetime', claiming it 'begs the question of treason'. Really? Bigger than infected blood, Horizon and rape gangs? How about the expenses scandal? Cash for questions? Cash for honours? Cash for influence? Cash for access? I'd add in the Covid fraud scandal, in which one of Yusuf's own former colleagues, James McMurdock, has now become embroiled. The public as a whole doesn't appear to be as exercised about this as those in Yusuf's social media bubble. Granted, Reform voters are more likely than the general public to think transparency was the priority. But when it comes to the electorate as a whole, almost half (49 per cent) think it was more important to evacuate the Afghan nationals who had worked with British forces, even if this meant covering up the breach, with just one in five disagreeing. Reform cannot have it both ways. They cannot argue that it's all The Blob's fault – and then only blame politicians like Jenrick and Braverman and not the incompetent civil servants who presided over this shambles. We know why they're doing this – they hate Tories despite both Farage and his deputy Richard Tice both once being one. In one swipe, Yusuf described former defence secretary Ben Wallace, as 'the ultimate Tory', whatever that is supposed to mean. This is a man who fought for Queen and country in several armed conflicts. He wanted to protect British troops and the Afghans who served with them from being murdered by terrorists. Guess what? Tice agreed with him at the time, tweeting: 'We must protect the brave Afghans who helped us and their families by settling them in the UK'. What makes Wallace a 'typical Tory' – but not Dame Andrea Jenkyns and Sir Jake Berry when all three served under mass migration loving Boris Johnson? Yusuf added for good measure: 'The list of former Tory ministers who should defect to Reform is shorter than the list that should probably be in jail.' As a result of the attack on Braverman, her husband Rael, who defected to Reform in December, announced he was resigning from the party. There is now surely no chance Braverman – who had been top of the Tory defection watch list – will jump ship. While that may suit Yusuf, who many consider responsible for Rupert Lowe's departure after the member for Great Yarmouth loudly criticised the impact of mass migration on UK culture, I'm not sure it serves Reform. Nor do these repeated ad hominem attacks on Tories they not-so-secretly agree with on almost everything. Righties can see through this nonsense, which only emboldens Labour, the Greens and God forbid, newly enfranchised Jeremy Corbyn. Such is the animus that Yusuf apologised after his X account liked an anti-Semitic post targeting Robert Jenrick and his family. It's all so unedifying. If Reform really wants to be taken seriously it should stop behaving like an anti Conservative protest movement - not least when it will need the votes of these 'typical Tories' to win power.
