Latest news with #John Healey
Daily Mail
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Fury as secret identities of SAS troops are leaked online by army association magazine in fresh data blunder that could have put lives at risk
An urgent probe has been launched after the identities of SAS troops from one of its most senior regiments were published online. The fresh data blunder came last year when a Grenadier Guards' in-house publication included a rollcall of the names and deployments of its most senior officers. Ten men were listed next to the codename MAB - which is shorthand for MoD A block - the site of the UK special forces headquarters, The Sunday Times has reported. The codename has been widely publicised online - in turn allowing any terrorist group or enemy state to work out that the troops were part of the SAS. The document containing the information about the soldiers' identities was produced by the Grenadier Guards Regimental Association. The group is a charitable association made up of former service members - with such organisations routinely handed information about active army personnel. Defence secretary John Healey is understood to be furious at the data breach which comes just days after the Afghan superinjunction was exposed. Head of the army General Sir Roly Walker has ordered an investigation into why the details of the SAS soldiers were so widely available. He said according to The Sunday Times: 'The security of our people is of the utmost importance and we take any breach extremely seriously.' 'As a result of this incident, I have directed an immediate review into our data-sharing arrangements with our regimental and corps associations to ensure appropriate guidance and safeguards are in place to best support the vital work they do,' he added. Meanwhile, SAS legend Chris Ryan was also concerned at the leak, and told MailOnline last night: 'There are serious questions to be answered here. 'Why is this data readily available and to who? 'This is an information management issue. Malicious or accidental insider, a breach has consequences. 'What classification is the in-house magazine and who signed it off? 'When these breaches happen, there's needs to be accountability or they will keep happening.' The former military hardman-turned acclaimed author added: 'This is a "MABulous" blunder by the Guards - that's why they have their own squadron.' It comes after the Mail revealed earlier this week that special forces, MI6 spies and government officials were among more than 100 Britons on the lost Afghan dataset. It emerged that a secret operation smuggling migrants to Britain was being run by ministers after a military blunder put 100,000 'at risk of death' from the Taliban. Ministers fought for two years to hush-up the data blunder with an unprecedented super-injunction that silenced this newspaper and other media. The High Court was told the draconian gagging order was necessary to protect 100,000 Afghans the UK had put 'at risk of death'. But after we were able to get access to the database and analyse it, it became clear that dozens of senior British military officers including a brigadier and government officials were also exposed. The Mail's investigation triggered a massive secrecy row yesterday as security-cleared parliamentarians erupted in fury at being kept in the dark. Lord Beamish, chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, said: 'I am astounded at this. 'The idea that members of MI6 are on this get quarterly reports from the security agencies and we have heard nothing at all. Why?' The MOD said: 'It's longstanding policy of successive governments to not comment on Special Forces. 'We take the security of our personnel very seriously and personnel, particularly those in sensitive positions, always have appropriate measures in place to protect their security.' A spokesman added: 'The government strongly welcomes the Intelligence and Security Committee's scrutiny of the Afghan data incident. 'Defence Intelligence and the wider department have been instructed by the Defence Secretary to give their full support to the ISC and all parliamentary committees. 'If 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.'
Times
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
How spies and soldiers will face the blame over Afghan data breach
On a dark winter's day in December 2023, John Healey was escorted into a secure briefing room at the Ministry of Defence and handed a brown envelope. The shadow defence secretary had just received a superinjunction, prohibiting him from repeating a word of what he was about to be told by James Heappey, the armed forces minister. The contents of their discussion would not become public for another 18 months, as the Conservative government used the courts to prevent The Times and other newspapers from revealing a catastrophic data leak involving thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in Britain from the Taliban. Healey left the building shocked by the gravity of the situation, knowing he would almost certainly have to handle the fallout when the veil of secrecy was finally lifted. That moment arrived on Tuesday. In parliament, Healey, now the defence secretary, told MPs how a defence official had inadvertently leaked a list containing the details of nearly 19,000 Afghans in February 2022. It also contained the names of more than 100 British special forces troops, MI6 spies and military officers who had vouched for some of the Afghans. The previous government's response had been to spend hundreds of millions of pounds bringing several thousand impacted individuals and their families to the UK via a secret Afghan Response Route (ARR), without parliament or voters knowing. Sir Keir Starmer and shadow senior cabinet ministers had been looped in shortly after entering government but Healey's wife only discovered what her husband had been dealing with when he delivered the statement. After days of recriminations and Conservative buck-passing, many questions around the scandal remain unanswered this weekend. In Westminster, the defence committee has vowed to investigate the cover-up, with Sir Ben Wallace and Sir Grant Shapps, the former defence secretaries, likely to be interrogated when MPs return from summer recess. • Grant Shapps 'trying to rewrite history' on Afghan leak While both have defended the superinjunction, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister who presided over it, has not said a word and is overseas. The intelligence and security committee (ISC), a body made up of peers and MPs that scrutinises the UK's spy agencies, is furious it was kept in the dark and has demanded a host of government documents around the leak and the cover-up. It has statutory powers, and will launch its own inquiry in due course. Lord Beamish, who chairs the committee, is equally incensed by MI6's failure to inform the committee of the potential disclosure of its agents' identities. Despite providing quarterly updates to the ISC on any major developments, the service failed to mention the issue at any point. The ISC has demanded answers from MI6 and the committee is set to summon Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing chief of the intelligence service, or his successor, Blaise Metreweli, to explain the omission. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has also commissioned a review into how the government gagged senior parliamentary figures, himself and the Lord Speaker included, and the constitutional issues this raises. He hopes to update MPs either on Monday or Tuesday. But the biggest unknown is the long-term impact on public perception of parliament, the two main political parties, and British democracy itself. By the time Healey was ushered into the MoD's briefing room in 2023 he had already been made aware of a series of failings relating to the Afghan evacuation. In September 2021, a month after Kabul fell to the Taliban, he had pressed Wallace, the defence secretary, over a human error that resulted in the personal information of 265 Afghans who had worked alongside British troops being shared with hundreds of others who were on the same email distribution list. Wallace apologised and insisted action had been taken to prevent it from happening again; earlier this year, the Afghans affected were told they would be able to claim up to £4,000 in compensation. • How top military chief's role in Afghan data leak was hidden But by August 2023, Healey had identified a total of four data breaches associated with the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), the main route for bringing over personnel who had served alongside the UK armed forces. On August 13, he released them to the media in a 'Dossier of Failure'. He would not know until later, but the following day the MoD discovered it had another leak — this time bigger than any before. It was decided three months later that he should be informed. Healey's allies believe this was only because he was continually grilling Tory ministers on problems with the Arap scheme. Healey received one more briefing on the secret Afghan operation in opposition, early in the new year. By the time he entered the MoD as defence secretary in July last year, the scheme had been running for months. But beyond a monthly trickle of Afghan relocations to the UK, little had changed. Healey believed it needed to, and was alarmed not just at what his predecessors had left him to deal with, but the apparent secretive mindset that had set in among civil servants. This complaint has been echoed by a number of senior aides who worked for Sunak in No 10. 'For the scale of catastrophe it was, I was very surprised at the lack of urgency from officials in getting people out [of Afghanistan],' said one. 'There was quite a churn of officials working on it.' Healey began to push for a reassessment of the threat posed by the Taliban to the Afghans on the list — the reason for the superinjunction remaining in place — but even this took months of internal debate within Whitehall to get started. • Who knew about the Afghan data breach — and who was in the dark? At the beginning of this year, Paul Rimmer, a retired deputy chief of defence intelligence, was finally commissioned to lead a review. By June, Rimmer had determined that the leaked document had not spread as widely as feared and that its value to the Taliban, as well as its risk to the Afghans named in it, had diminished sufficiently. Decisions were finally made: only a portion of the Afghans had a legitimate right to come to Britain, many of whom had already arrived. The secret route would end and the MoD would no longer fight to keep the superinjunction in place. Healey's team believe that Tory ministers were genuinely determined to protect the Afghans when they first sought the superinjunction. But as time wore on, they suspect a desire to protect reputations crept into the decision-making process. While Shapps has in recent days expressed 'surprise' that it lasted as long as it did, they point out that last summer he successfully appealed against a decision to lift the superinjunction, right in the middle of the general election campaign. Healey is determined that the culture of cover-ups and the persistent issues with data security — stretching well beyond Afghanistan — are permanently resolved in the MoD. A new chief information officer has been brought in and, in January, new software was introduced on MoD computers to more securely share data. Recently a review of the Afghan data leak was completed to ensure information was being held at the right security classification and in the right location. That no one has been sacked for the scandal has also raised uncomfortable questions about accountability. To this end, Healey's long-term defence reforms will establish clearer chains of command. Under a new military strategic headquarters, the chiefs of the RAF, army and navy will formally report to the chief of defence staff for the first time, with Healey overseeing a department more clearly focused on policy development. Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, is also joining Healey as his strategic director and will be responsible for challenging and reviewing all major decisions. Chalmers is hugely experienced in foreign, defence and security policy: he was previously a visiting professor in the war studies department at King's College London and served as an adviser to Jack Straw when he was foreign secretary. Healey has described him as a 'one-man intellectual powerhouse'. An MoD source said: 'We're continuing to drive the biggest defence reforms in 50 years — that means proper accountability, better transparency for parliament and a stronger internal challenge to the MoD status quo.' And yet, the mistakes keep happening. This weekend, The Sunday Times has revealed how a publication associated with a senior British Army regiment has been routinely disclosing the identities of special forces personnel in its ranks. The MoD was warned about the security breach two months ago, and yet the documents are still online after they initially appeared to have been taken down. Healey has demanded an investigation. In No 10, Starmer's aides are also contemplating their next steps, amid growing calls for a public inquiry. This has not yet been ruled out, although Downing Street believes the defence committee and the ISC should be given space to conduct their own investigations. However, the wider consequences of the Afghan debacle will persist. According to government sources, approximately 24,000 impacted Afghans and their families will come to the UK via all available schemes. Of those, 4,500 Afghans have already arrived or are en route via the ARR and given indefinite leave to remain. This allows them to apply for British residency and, ultimately, citizenship. A further 2,400 have been earmarked for relocation over the coming months, with the total costs associated with the secret route expected to hit £850 million. On average, impacted Afghans have brought eight family members with them — the highest number is reported to have been 22 — placing added pressure on already tight housing stocks and stretched public services. Officials had originally hoped they would bring only their wife and two children. They have each been offered 'transitional accommodation' lasting up to nine months. Many of the Afghans clandestinely flown to the UK were originally put up in disused army barracks, under an operation codenamed 'Lazurite'. In 2023, Weeton Barracks near Blackpool was used to house more than 50 families, although it is unclear whether they were individuals caught up in the leak. Many Afghans were then moved into service accommodation, which is usually set aside for military personnel and their families. At its peak, 12 per cent of military homes were being used, although that has fallen below 2 per cent. The MoD has now decided to end the scheme. Others, however, have been dispersed to various local authorities around the country to be housed, including, in some cases, hotels. The secrecy around the Afghans has made locating them difficult, although Bracknell Forest council in Berkshire, which covers the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, said it had received about 320 new Afghan residents alone this year. The sudden influx appears to have created tension with locals. In May, the council was forced to issue an explanatory note saying: 'The council and its partners are aware of some misinformation circulating regarding our new Afghan families. While this misinformation is being circulated by a small number of individuals, we want to make sure all our residents have the facts. We would like to reiterate that our new families are not illegal immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees. They have indefinite leave to remain and so are now UK residents.' A year on from a summer of rioting prompted by the Southport atrocity, there are growing concerns over the national impact on community cohesion — a point also raised in Rimmer's report. No 10 argues the government's response has reduced the possibility of such violence reoccurring, noting that the strategy for announcing the Afghan leak drew heavily on Starmer's response to the Southport riots and the delayed charging of Axel Rudakubana with terror and biological weapons offences. A senior source said: 'We know we are operating in a very low trust environment, which is why we are being as transparent as humanly possible.' A YouGov poll published on Wednesday suggests this approach is working, with 49 per cent of respondents supporting the superinjunction and the need to protect the Afghans, compared with 20 per cent who disapproved. However, the attacks on police officers during violent protests outside an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex, over an unrelated arrest of an asylum seeker on suspicion of alleged sexual assaults in the town, has highlighted how quickly things could escalate again. Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common, said: 'The leak is likely to deepen voters' frustrations about the competence of government and the civil service, confirming their suspicions that they are just not up to the job.' For now, the greatest risk for Starmer is that the Afghan leak entrenches the belief that Britain's political system is broken, regardless of which party is in charge.
Arab News
a day ago
- Politics
- Arab News
UK to fight compensation claims after massive Afghanistan data leak
London: The UK will resist paying compensation to thousands of Afghans caught up in a data leak scandal, The Times reported on Saturday. The names and details of around 100,000 people in Afghanistan who worked with UK Armed Forces as part of the US-led coalition in the country were accidentally revealed online by a Ministry of Defence employee in February 2022. It led to a massive covert program to bring large numbers of Afghans to Britain for fear they could be targeted by the Taliban, it emerged this week. But the MoD will fight five-figure claims against it for endangering the lives of Afghans caught up in the leak following a review by former civil servant Paul Rimmer, ordered by Defence Secretary John Healey, which suggested that the risk to their safety had 'diminished.' Lawyers for the ministry say taxpayers have already paid enough after billions of pounds were set aside for the repatriation scheme of around 24,000 Afghan personnel and their families to the UK, a source told The Times. Thousands of Afghans still trapped in their country have been left in fear for their safety after learning about the data breach on July 15. The leak and accompanying repatriation scheme were kept from public knowledge after the government used a legal device called a superinjunction to prevent reporting on it. Before the superinjunction was lifted by a court, the government announced a small compensation scheme for victims of a separate, smaller data leak from 2021, of £4,000 ($5,364) per person. The MoD will contest compensation claims by law firms representing Afghans affected by the 2022 breach. The biggest lawsuit, brought by Barings Law, involves over 1,000 Afghan clients. The Times said it has seen WhatsApp messages sent to people in the UK, Afghanistan and Pakistan urging them to register with Barings to join the lawsuit. The firm's head of data protection, Adnan Malik, said around 100 people a day are signing up to sue the MoD, and the firm expects to be able to win payouts of 'at least five figures' for those who can prove they had been contacted by the ministry confirming that their details were leaked. Law firm Leigh Day is also suing the government on behalf of hundreds of Afghan clients. 'We are currently acting for a number of existing clients and are also being approached each day by dozens more people who have been affected,' Sean Humber, a partner at the firm, told The Times. The MoD confirmed that around 5,400 Afghans still in their country are eligible for flights to the UK under the Afghan Response Route and the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy. It expects to have relocated all those deemed at risk from the Taliban and with a right to come to Britain under its various programs by 2029. An MoD spokesman told The Times: 'We will robustly defend against any legal action or compensation. The independent Rimmer Review concluded that it is highly unlikely that merely being on the spreadsheet would be grounds for an individual to be targeted, and this is the basis on which the court lifted its super injunction this week.'
Free Malaysia Today
2 days ago
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Thousands of Afghans and families brought to UK after data breach
Some 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have now been brought to Britain or are in transit. (EPA Images pic) LONDON : Thousands of Afghans who worked with the UK government and their families were brought to Britain in a secret programme after a 2022 data breach put their lives at risk, a minister revealed today. Defence minister John Healey unveiled the scheme to parliament after the UK High Court today lifted a super-gag order banning reports of the events. In February 2022 a spreadsheet containing the names and details of almost 19,000 Afghans who had asked to be relocated to Britain was accidentally leaked by a UK official just six months after the Taliban seized Kabul, Healey said. 'This was a serious departmental error,' Healey said, adding 'lives may have been at stake'. The previous Conservative government put in place a secret programme to help those 'judged to be at the highest risk of reprisals by the Taliban', he said. Some 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have now been brought to Britain or are in transit under the programme known as the Afghan Response Route at a cost of around £400 million, Healey said. They are among some 36,000 Afghans who have been accepted by Britain under different schemes since the August 2021 fall of Kabul. As Labour's opposition defence spokesman Healey was briefed on the scheme in December 2023, but the Conservative government asked a court to impose a 'super-injunction' banning any mention of it in parliament or by the press. When Labour came to power in July 2024, the scheme was in full swing, but Healey said he had been 'deeply uncomfortable to be constrained from reporting to this House'. 'Ministers decided not to tell parliamentarians at an earlier stage about the data incident, as the widespread publicity would increase the risk of the Taliban obtaining the dataset,' he added. Healey set up a review of the scheme on becoming defence minister in the new Labour government. This concluded there was 'very little intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution'. The Afghan Response Route has now been closed, the minister said, apologising for the data breach which 'should never have happened'.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Why thousands of Afghans were secretly relocated to the UK
This week an email was sent to people in Afghanistan. It told the recipients, who had all worked for British forces in Afghanistan, that some of their personal data 'may have been compromised'. All had applied for asylum in the UK, fearful because their work for Britain made them a target for the Taliban. Now they were told their asylum applications had been leaked into the public domain. They were advised not to take phone calls or respond to messages or emails from unknown contacts, to limit access to their social media, to consider closing their accounts, and to only go online via a private connection. Understandably, they were terrified. Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian's defence and security editor, tells Helen Pidd how 24 hours later, John Healey, the defence secretary, apologised for probably the biggest – and most expensive — data leak in British government history. And the former Afghan judge Marzia Babakarkhail tells Helen about how Afghans fear the data list could could endanger their lives.
