Keir Starmer says Tories have 'serious questions' to answer over MoD's Afghan data breach
Keir Starmer has said former ministers in the previous Conservative government have "serious questions to answer" over the data leak that exposed the details of thousands of Afghans who supported British forces.
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Sir Keir said Labour inherited a series of failings from the Tories after a secret scheme costing hundreds of millions of pounds was set up after the breach, while a superinjunction was imposed to block any reporting about the leak.
"Yesterday, the defence secretary set out the full extent of the failings that we inherited – a major data breach, a superinjunction, a secret route that has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds.
"Ministers who served under the party opposite have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen," he said during Prime Minister's Questions.
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 by a defence official.
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 Ministry of Defence only became aware of the breach when excerpts from the dataset were posted anonymously on a Facebook group in August 2023, and a superinjunction was granted at the High Court in an attempt to prevent the Taliban finding out about the leak.
Speaking to LBC on Wednesday, former Defence Secretary Sir Ben Wallace said the decision to apply for the gagging order was “not a cover-up” and that if the leak had been reported it would have “put in peril those we needed to help out”.
The ex-Tory minister told LBC the injunction was only intended to be a short-term measure.
He said: “We applied for a four month normal injunction, not a super injunction. I took a decision at the time that my priority was to protect the lives and welfare of those Afghans who had in some cases made many sacrifices or indeed sacrificed parts of their family to protect British forces.
“These were people potentially eligible under the Arap scheme and that if the reporting had happened quickly, it could have potentially allowed the Taliban to make moves on these individuals.
"And so we needed time and we needed, needed space to find out, investigate where this list had gone, whether it had actually got to the Taliban and whether we could get out many of those people.
"I put those people first, not my reputation, not the government, those people. Now people can disagree with that. They can say no, no, we should have.
"Newspapers should be able to write whatever they want straight away. But, but we did that. We did it on a three month. I think it was a four month."
Asked why it became a superinjunction, Mr Wallace said: "I can't tell you that. That is a question for my successors. I left on the 31st of August.
"The thing was converted into a super injunction on the 1st of September and I don't know why a four month application became a two year thing."
It came as Defence Secretary John Healey said the person involved in the leak was “no longer doing the same job”.
Speaking to The News Agents' Lewis Goodall, Mr Healey said: "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."
The leak led to the creation of a secret Afghan relocation scheme – the Afghanistan Response Route – in April 2024. The scheme is understood to have cost around £400 million so far.
An independent review, commissioned by the Government in January 2025, concluded last month that the dataset is “unlikely to significantly shift Taliban understanding of individuals who may be of interest to them”.
Meanwhile, a senior Taliban official has told The Telegraph following the leak that they have had access to the list since 2022.
"We got the list from the internet during the very first days when it was leaked," the official said.
"A special unit has been launched to find them and make sure they do not work with Britain."We’ve been calling and visiting their family members to track them down.
“Senior figures in the establishment in Kandahar are pressuring officials in Kabul to find them. They believe these individuals are still working with the British, and say the problem must be dealt with."