Watchdog MPs have launched a “broad inquiry” into the Ministry of Defence’s secrecy-shrouded Afghan data breach, which has caused an estimated 7,355 people to be offered resettlement in the UK.
The Defence Select Committee probe will look at the last government’s use of a “super-injunction” to keep the February 2022 leak under wraps until July this year, as well as security lessons learned – and not learned. It will also examine the overall success of efforts to resettle Afghans in the UK since the Taliban returned to power in 2001.
The MoD has estimated the “Afghanistan Response Route” set up to resettle people in the UK as a direct result of the 2022 data breach scheme would have a lifetime cost of £850m. But, in a report published yesterday, the National Audit Office said the MoD had so far failed to provide sufficient evidence to give “confidence regarding the completeness and accuracy of its estimates” of the scheme's costs.
As of July this year, 7,355 people were estimated to be entitled to resettlement under the ARR.
The NAO said the total cost to the MoD of all Afghan resettlement activity between 2021 and 2029 is forecast to exceed £2bn, with more than 27,000 people expected to be resettled through the ARR and Afghanistan Relocations and Assistance Policy schemes.
Defence Committee chair Tan Dhesi said MPs had been “shocked” by the revelation that hundreds of millions of pounds had been committed to bringing thousands of Afghans to safety following the MoD’s “colossal” data breach.
“We on the Defence Committee want to understand how this breach could have been allowed to happen, and, once it had happened, whether successive governments took well-informed and sensible decisions under cover of an unprecedented super-injunction,” he said. “We will be taking as much evidence as possible in public and on camera, to shine a light on events kept secret. "
He added: “Was the government right to use the courts for so long to prevent public debate on matters of public interest and controversy? What is to stop another catastrophic data breach or secret injunction? These and other questions will be at the heart of our inquiry.
“Over four years on from the UK withdrawal, we will also take a broad look at the successes, failures and opportunity costs of the Afghan resettlement programme. We intend to identify the key issues for affected Afghans, defence, public services, local communities and public trust, and reach a view on what the government should do next.”
The Defence Committee also aims to answer a number of key questions on topics including ministers’ use of a legal injunction to suppress reporting of the data breach, the MoD’s information-security and risk-management practices, planning and delivery of the ARR and the wider resettlement of eligible Afghans following the fall of Kabul.
Among the specific questions are why the government opted to seek injunctions over the 2022 data breach, rather than use a “D Notice” to stop mainstream media reporting the security lapse.
The committee will also seek to discover how that breach was possible given the introduction of additional controls at the MoD following earlier data breaches related to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Further questions include what systemic and cultural factors enabled the 2022 breach – and how confident the nation can be that another serious data breach cannot take place at the MoD today.
The inquiry is open to written submissions until 14 October.