Government 'unable to calculate' total cost of Afghan data leak relocation plan

The National Audit Office (NAO) has confirmed that the amount spent on the emergency scheme was not recorded specifically in Ministry of Defence (MoD) accounts.

The figures relating to the covert Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) was instead included in broader resettlement costs incurred following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021.

Read More: Fears of riots after secret Afghan resettlement scheme exposed following MoD data breach

Read More: How the UK silenced a scandal: My two year battle to reveal the truth by Lewis Goodall

As LBC first reported, 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.

The leak of the so-called “kill list” put up to 100,000 at risk and forced the government into resettling nationals to a greater extent than planned.

After the breach, the MoD under the previous Conservative government covertly set up the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) in autumn 2024 for people in the country whose details were leaked, leaving them at risk of reprisals and executions by the Taliban.

Journalists, including LBC's Lewis Goodall and politicians were subjected to a super-injunction barring them from reporting the catastrophic blunder by an MoD civil servant until July 2025 when the scheme was closed.

The Government spent two years using this gag order to prevent the public from learning about the mishap.

The scheme was separate from the main Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), and estimated - by the MoD - to cost £850 million.

In a report published on Wednesday, the NAO said the Government had failed to provide enough evidence to give the watchdog "confidence" in the accuracy of this figure.

The watchdog said: "The MoD is not able to determine exactly what it has spent on resettling people through the ARR scheme.

"This is because it did not separately identify the costs of the ARR scheme in its accounting system, meaning that these costs were not visible in its management accounts, but instead included them within its total spending on Afghan resettlement activities."

The MoD said it had avoided differentiating the costs in order to comply with an unprecedented superinjunction that was granted following the leak amid fears the Taliban could target would-be refugees for reprisals.

Although it does not know exactly how much it has spent on the scheme, it estimates it has spent around £400 million on relocating people through ARR so far, and will spend a further £450 million.

The costs to the whole of Government are expected to be around £128,000 per resettled individual, of which an estimated £53,000 would be met by the MoD.

Almost 18,714 applicants for the original Arap scheme had their details leaked in the breach.

But the NAO said that at the time of its report publication, the Government "had not provided us with sufficient evidence to give us confidence regarding the completeness and accuracy of these estimates".

An MoD spokesperson said: "We are committed to honouring the moral obligation we owe to those Afghans who stood with us and risked their lives.

"Since taking the decision to support the lifting of the superinjunction brought by the previous government, we have been clear on the costs associated with relocating eligible Afghans to the UK - and are fully committed to transparency.

"The cost of all Afghan resettlement schemes, including the Afghan Response Route, has been fully funded as part of the Government's Spending Review."