Afghanistan

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Although I welcome it and his intent to inject parliamentary transparency and scrutiny, this whole data breach is a mess and wholly unacceptable. As I mentioned to the Minister for the Armed Forces during our recent secret briefing, I am minded to recommend to my Defence Committee colleagues that we thoroughly investigate it to ascertain what has transpired, given the serious ramifications on so many levels.

As things stand, notwithstanding the contents of the Rimmer review, how confident is my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary that the Afghans affected, many of whom bravely supported our service personnel, will not be at risk of recriminations and reprisals?

[John Healey]

I can only recommend that my hon. Friend reads in full the public version of the Rimmer report, which I have published today. Rimmer sets out conclusions and an updated risk assessment, taking an up-to-date view, recognising that the situation in Afghanistan is nearly four years on from the point at which the Taliban took control and that the present regime sees those who may threaten the regime itself as a greater threat to their operation than any former Government official or serving official.

I recommend that my hon. Friend reads that report, and I expect that he, as the Defence Committee Chair, will want to take full advantage of this restored parliamentary accountability. I have always believed that our Select Committee system in this House is perfectly capable of, and better suited to, many of the in-depth inquiries that often get punted into public inquiries or calls for such inquiries. I hope he will have noted the fact that the shadow Defence Secretary also endorsed that view.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for the Armed Forces for his briefing on this issue this morning.

I am pleased this House now has the opportunity to scrutinise this alarming data breach. It was right that the then Government moved to introduce a new scheme to try to minimise the risk to the Afghan soldiers and their families caught up in this breach involving 18,714 individuals in total. It is the very least we owe them given the sacrifices they made to support our campaign in Afghanistan, and I welcome the apologies from both sides of the House as a result of this data breach.

There are, however, serious questions raised about how this data breach was allowed to happen under the Conservatives’ watch, and the heightened level of risk it has created for the Afghans involved. What steps have been taken to address the root cause of the breach and ensure that it cannot happen again? Reporting by the Financial Times this afternoon suggests that an original relocation scheme considered for all 25,000 Afghan personnel could cost up to £7 billion. Will he confirm what assessment his Department has made of that figure, and why that was kept hidden from the public?

The immediate priority must be to ensure the safety of all those individuals caught up in this breach, so what assurances can the Secretary of State provide that lifting the super-injunction does not heighten dangers for the individuals concerned? What steps is he taking to ensure that the individuals whose data was leaked are aware of the incident? What additional support is being provided to them directly now that the case is in the public domain? In the light of these developments, can he outline when the casework and final relocations under this and the ARAP scheme will be completed?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Healey]

I am sure Ministers will report to my right hon. Friend’s Committee if she invites us to do so. She is right to make the big argument that anyone providing data to the British Government has a right to expect that personal data to be stored securely, handled safely and not subject to the sort of loss or breach that we saw too often in the early days of the Afghan relocation schemes.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I commend the Secretary of State for his honesty and I agree with everything he says in his statement. What an appalling mess, but part of the original sin was our intervening militarily and then scuttling out. On a wider point, may I take it that we have learnt our lesson and have got over the liberal imperial itch of the Cameron and Blair eras to intervene militarily in ungovernable countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? Let us now move on, but I support what the Secretary of State said.