6 days ago
Sir Ben Wallace doesn't know why Afghan superinjunction was imposed
Sir Ben Wallace said his government did not initially apply for a superinjunction to block reporting of a massive data leak relating to Afghan soldiers and he did not know why it had been granted.
The then defence secretary said the original application from the Tory government was for a four-month injunction to stop the media from disclosing the details of the leak.
But he said that this regular injunction was subsequently upgraded to a superinjunction but he was unaware of the reasons why.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: 'We went to court seeking a four month injunction to be placed on the reporting of this leak.
'Many of these injunctions are constantly having to be refreshed and between now and back then on numerous occasions government lawyers would have been going back to the court justifying the reason for this.
'I am afraid I was not in court on the 1st of September, I had actually handed over. I don't know why Justice Knowles at the time converted that to a superinjunction. It wasn't what our application was.'
The original application for the injunction was made in August 2023 after the Ministry of Defence became aware of the leak.
It was revealed yesterday when the superinjunction was lifted that 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' in February 2022 by a defence official.
That prompted the government to set up a secret Afghan relocation scheme to help the victims amid fears they could have been targeted by the Taliban.
