Afghanistan

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement and for receipt earlier this morning of a hard copy of the Rimmer review. I also thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Armed Forces for briefing me yesterday and other parliamentary colleagues today. Furthermore, given the nature of the super-injunction and the fact that the timing and nature of the statement relate entirely to the court’s lifting of that super-injunction, I recognise that it was entirely right for the Secretary of State to update the House at the earliest opportunity, and I welcome the opportunity that colleagues now have to scrutinise these matters.

Let me begin by declaring an interest. I was a Defence Minister in August 2023, when the Department first became aware of the breach, my main role being to chair one meeting on the matter in August 2023 because I was the duty Minister. Thereafter, however, as Minister for Defence Procurement and with this sitting outside my portfolio, I had relatively minimal direct involvement. That said, the Secretary of State has issued an apology on behalf of the Government and I join him in that, and in recognising that this data leak should never have happened and was an unacceptable breach of all relevant data protocols. I also agree that it is right for an apology to be issued specifically to those whose data was compromised.

It is nevertheless a fact that cannot be ignored that when this breach came to light, the immediate priority of the then Government was to avoid a very specific and terrible scenario: namely, an error on the part of an official of the British state leading to the torture, or even murder, of persons in the dataset at the hands of what remains a brutal Taliban regime. As the Rimmer review confirms, that scenario, thankfully, appears to have been avoided. Of course, we understand that the review was set up in January and reported to the Secretary of State in June.

I want to be clear that it is entirely appropriate that the Secretary of State has sought to update the Department’s understanding of the threat on the ground in Afghanistan that exists today, particularly for those persons in the dataset who had previously been considered to be at the greatest risk of reprisals. However, the House will appreciate that when Ministers became aware of the data breach in August 2023, we did not have the luxury of six months in which to assess the situation. As Rimmer says in paragraph 53:

“The review notes that the passage of time is particularly relevant.”

I know that my former ministerial colleague—the former Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, who led the response to the leak—will have been focused entirely on what he saw as his duty of care to those at risk of reprisals, based on the threat assessment that pertained at the time. However, any threat picture is constantly evolving, and as I say, I support the Secretary of State’s decision to review the MOD’s understanding of the threat. Given the latest situation, as reported by Rimmer, we support his conclusion that the Afghanistan response route can now be closed.

Turning to the super-injunction, I entirely understand why this would be a subject of considerable interest, particularly to the newspapers and media outlets concerned. We have an independent judiciary, and it is not for me to comment either on the decision to grant the injunction in the first place or to lift it today, but it is surely telling that paragraph 56 of the Rimmer review states that planning at the time that the Government became aware of the breach in the summer of 2023 was based on a

“risk judgement that were the Taleban to secure access to the dataset, the consequences for affected individuals may be serious.”

Had that not been the case, no doubt the Court would have been less likely to grant the injunction, and certainly not a super-injunction.

On the leak, can the Secretary of State confirm that it was by a civil servant, and that Ministers at the time took steps to change the casework procedure by not using spreadsheets sent by email, but moving to a more secure system fully within the entirely secure network? Can he confirm that, although the dataset was of about 18,000, only a relatively small portion were identified as at high risk of reprisals, and only a small number had been settled here, which is why, as he stated, the cost is about £400 million, not the £7 billion reported elsewhere? Now that these matters are rightly in the public domain and given the reassessment of the threat in the Rimmer review, I agree that it would be wholly appropriate for the Defence Committee and others to look further into these matters.

Can the Secretary of State comment on one specific item being reported, which is that someone—I refer not to the person who made the leak, but another apparent third party who obtained some of the data—was engaged in blackmail? Did the original Metropolitan police investigation look at that, and if not, will he consider reopening it so that the police can look at that specific point, which has serious implications?

Although we must recognise the huge role played by Afghan nationals in support of our armed forces, any policy in this area must always be balanced against our own national interest. We support the Government in closing the ARR scheme, as we did with their decision to close the full ARAP programme.

[John Healey]

I welcome the tone in which the shadow Defence Secretary has responded, and I welcome his joining me in the apology on behalf of the British Government to those whose data has been compromised. I also welcome his acceptance that, as he put it, it was “entirely appropriate” for the Defence Secretary, as part of a new Government, to look to update the Department’s assessment of the threat. I am very pleased that, as the House will have noted, he supports Rimmer’s conclusions and my policy judgments that the Government have announced today. The shadow Defence Secretary is right that, in simple terms, Rimmer gives us a revised, up-to-date assessment of the risk—in particular, the risk to those individuals whose data may be on that spreadsheet. He does confirm that it is highly unlikely that their name being on the dataset increases the risk of their being targeted.

The shadow Defence Secretary asked me three or four specific questions. He asked about the official—it was a defence official. I cannot account for the improvements in data handling that previous Ministers may have made, but when I did his job in opposition, this data leak was just one of many from the Afghan schemes. I can also say that, in the past year since the election, the Government have appointed a new chief information officer, installed new software to securely share data and completed a comprehensive review of the legacy Afghan data on the casework system.

On the £7 billion figure, which I think the shadow Defence Secretary may have picked up from court papers, that was a previous estimate. It is related not simply to the Afghan response route but an estimate of the total cost of all Government Afghan schemes for the entire period in which they may operate.

On the significance of today’s announcement and the policy decisions that we have taken compared with simply continuing the policy and schemes that we inherited, the taxpayer will pay £1.2 billion less over the period, about 9,500 fewer Afghans will come to this country and, above all, proper accountability in this House and proper freedom of the media are restored.