Top civil servant to quit over Afghan data leak of Taliban 'kill-list'
A top Ministry of Defence civil servant is set to resign after a catastrophic data breach was revealed to have been covered up.
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David Williams has told staff in his department that he will quit in autumn amid the fallout from a major data leak of Afghans personal details.
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.
The government spent two years using an unprecedented injunction to prevent the public from learning about the mishap, LBC reported.
An estimated £7billion has been spent on mopping up after the mistake, with a large chunk of that being spent on resettling Afghanistan nationals.
Mr Williams said the department are already searching for his successor, The Times reports.
Read More: Person responsible for MoD data breach should lose their job, Penny Mordaunt believes
It comes after LBC reported that around 4,500 people have been brought to the UK after a data leak where more than 18,000 applicants to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) - a scheme set up to offer sanctuary in the UK to Afghans who supported British military operations - had their names and contact details, email addresses and phone numbers leaked.
The Ministry of Defence sought and was granted a contra mundum superinjunction — a rare legal order that not only barred publication of the story of the breach, but also prevented anyone from revealing that an injunction even existed.
Between 80,000 and 100,000 people, including the estimated number of family members of the ARAP applicants, were affected by the breach and could be at risk of harassment, torture or death if the Taliban obtained their data, judges said in June 2024.
The breach also saw the establishment of a secret scheme, the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), to bring some of those affected to the UK.
Senior sources in Afghanistan said the evacuation process of those affected by the leak was infiltrated by people with connections to the Taliban, who exploited the system so Taliban fighters could come to the UK, according to the Telegraph.
Previously, Defence Secretary John Healey refused to to tell LBC whether anyone had lost their job over the data breach.
Speaking to The News Agents' Lewis Goodall, Mr Healey said that the defence official responsible for the Afghan data breach is “no longer doing the same job on the Afghan brief” when asked if they are still employed by the British government.
"In the end, this is bigger than the actions of a single individual.
"For me as Defence Secretary now in this government, my biggest concern and my first focus coming into government was to try and get a grip of something that was entirely unprecedented."
Further asked if he believes anybody should be fired over the data breach, Mr Healey said: "My first priority was not trying to conduct some sort of witch hunt on the defence official that released the spreadsheet that caused this profound data loss…
"My argument to you is that accountability can start today, accountability in due course, as the facts of this are properly scrutinised and examined that will come."
Mr Healey also said “you can never say never” when asked if he could rule out the Ministry of Defence using superinjunctions in the future.