Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and to the Minister for the Armed Forces for a briefing yesterday. It meant that, temporarily, I was under a super-injunction. I was a little surprised when I was summoned to the MoD. On Monday afternoon I received a message asking me to come in for a confidential briefing. I had no idea what to expect, or of the magnitude of what we would hear in the Statement made by the Secretary of State yesterday.
It is a matter of extreme seriousness for a variety of reasons—the risk into which an official and the MoD placed Afghans who were already vulnerable, but also the fact that Parliament was entirely unable to scrutinise His Majesty’s Government on this issue for almost two years. The media reported immediately after the super-injunction was raised yesterday at midday; they had spent the last 22 months gathering evidence that, of course, they could not publish. There is a whole set of questions that are probably beyond the remit of the Minister who is responding today on behalf of the MoD, including what scrutiny Parliament is able to do and what the Government feel is appropriate regarding the media. Were the media being suppressed?
Lest anyone think that I am being cavalier about the lives of Afghans, it was absolutely clear that the United Kingdom had a duty to those Afghans who worked alongside His Majesty’s Armed Forces, including the interpreters and those who worked for the British Council. In light of that, the ARAP and ACRS schemes, which we all knew about, were the right approach. Yet we already knew, from open source material and cases that were brought to this House and the other place, that breaches of data had caused fines to be paid.
At the time of the evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021, it was clear that many people were left behind, and that the helplines were not necessarily fit for purpose. The hotline for parliamentarians and their staff did not necessarily act as a hotline at all. I certainly left messages about cases and received no follow-up or reply. I was not alone in that and, although I believe that I was not part of this data breach, some parliamentarians were.
We began to acknowledge our debt to some of the Afghans, but not all. Then a data breach, about which we knew nothing, happened over three years ago. That in itself is shocking. Has anybody in His Majesty’s Government taken responsibility for that? We understand from the Statement that it was reported to the Metropolitan Police, which believed that there was no criminal activity. Has anybody taken responsibility for this catastrophic data breach that potentially put many tens of thousands of lives in Afghanistan at risk and caused considerable concern to Afghans who were already in the UK, having come over as part of the ARAP scheme?
The former Secretary of State, Sir Ben Wallace, has said that the super-injunction was not a cover-up, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. Yet Mr Justice Chamberlain, who finally lifted the super-injunction yesterday, said in November 2023 that a super-injunction
“is likely to give rise to understandable suspicion that the court’s processes are being used for the purposes of censorship … This is corrosive of the public’s trust in Government”.
Does the Minister agree? Can he confirm that this Government would not seek to use a super-injunction or, in the event that it was felt that a super-injunction was an appropriate course of action, that it would not last for more than 600 days but could be for a very limited amount of time while a particular, specific policy needed to be undertaken? The substantive policy change that was brought in—the Afghanistan response route—seems to have been very sensible. Had it been brought to your Lordships’ House and the other place, parliamentarians may well have thought that it was the right policy and been happy to endorse it—but we were never asked, because of the super-injunction. We knew nothing about it.
Could the Minister tell us whether, in future, the Intelligence and Security Committee might be briefed in camera? What role would Parliament and the media be allowed to play? If the courts, Parliament and the media are not deployed appropriately, that raises questions about our own democracy that need to be considered.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, for their comments and their words about the way in which the Government tried to inform His Majesty’s Opposition and the defence spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats. We tried to ensure that as many Members of your Lordships’ House, as well as other people in the other place, were informed as appropriate. I apologise if that did not happen with everybody who may have expected to have been informed, but we tried to ensure that everybody was consulted and spoken to.
I join the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, in the apologies that His Majesty’s Government, through me, again make today for what happened, which was totally unacceptable.
Before I answer the specific questions, I shall make a couple of opening remarks. The whole House will agree that the UK owes a huge debt of gratitude to all those Afghans who fought alongside us and supported our efforts in Afghanistan. Although I appreciate that there is significant parliamentary and media concern around these issues, and rightly so, let us not also forget that we are talking about human lives.
As noble Lords will know, a major data loss occurred in February 2022, involving the dissemination of a spreadsheet containing names of applicants to the ARAP scheme. The previous Government responded by setting up a new assessment route—the Afghanistan response route—to protect the most at-risk individuals whose data was disseminated. The data, and the lives that sit behind them, were protected by an unprecedented super-injunction, which was granted by the High Court, based on the threat posed to those individuals. That is a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, made: it is the court that grants an injunction, and when the Government asked for an injunction they were granted a super-injunction.
It is our view that the previous Government acted in good faith to protect lives. However, when this Government took office, Ministers felt deeply uncomfortable —to go to some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, made—with the limits that the super-injunction placed on freedom of the press and parliamentary scrutiny. As a result, we therefore commissioned a reassessment of the situation, led by a former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, Paul Rimmer. Mr Rimmer, following a comprehensive review, found that it is
“unlikely that merely being on the dataset would be grounds for targeting”
by the Taliban. He also found that there was no evidence pointing to Taliban possession of the dataset. We have therefore decided, as have the courts, that the risks have reduced, and that the existence of the scheme and its associated costs should be brought into the public and parliamentary realms for the appropriate scrutiny. Therefore, we expect and invite parliamentary scrutiny for these decisions.
I will deal with a couple of the points that have been made. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, asked me how this happened. I do not normally do this, as noble Lords know, but I will read out from my brief so that I get it factually right. In February 2022, under the previous Government, a spreadsheet with names of individual applicants for ARAP—the resettlement scheme for Afghan citizens who worked for or with the UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan—was emailed outside of official government systems. This was mistakenly thought to contain the names of a small number of applicants, but in fact the email contained personal information linked to 18,700 applicants of ARAP and its predecessor, the ex-gratia scheme, or EGS. The data related to applications made on or before 7 January 2022. A small section of this spreadsheet appeared online on 14 August 2023, which is when the then Government first became aware that the MoD’s ARAP casework and spreadsheet had been mistakenly included with the original email. The previous Government investigated that and a report was sent to the Information Commissioner’s Office. I repeat that the Government reported this to the Metropolitan Police, which found that there was no malicious or malign intent by the individual responsible.
The noble Baroness asked whether we believe that the systems have now been adequately changed. In a statement yesterday, the Information Commissioner’s Office said:
“We’re reassured that the MoD’s investigation has resulted in taking necessary steps and minimised the risk of this happening again”.
I hope that will begin to reassure the noble Baroness with respect to her point about how the leak happened, the measures that have been taken and the way it has been looked at and investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which has now reported in a statement yesterday that it believes the MoD has, as far as it possibly can, taken the necessary action to prevent such a terrible and unfortunate incident happening again.
On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, of course it is of great concern that parliamentary and media scrutiny had, essentially, to be stopped. Parliament and the press have not been able to scrutinise the activity and decisions in the way that they should. When we came into office, we were, fairly obviously, uncomfortable with that. We looked at the facts and the situation and, in January this year, as the noble Baroness will know, the Secretary of State asked Mr Rimmer, a former senior officer at Defence Intelligence, to investigate.
Noble Lords will have seen Mr Rimmer’s report. There are a number of important facts in its key conclusions, including that:
“No evidence points clearly to Taleban possession of the dataset”,
and the fact that the policy
“appears an extremely significant intervention, with not inconsiderable risk to HMG and the UK, to address the potentially limited net additional risk the incident likely presents”.
In other words, with where we are now, after the passage of time and the various assessments of the risk in Afghanistan, Mr Rimmer now believes that it is appropriate for the Government to apply to the court to lift the injunction. With the evidence provided in the Government’s presentation, it was lifted at Noon yesterday. The Government have decided that the time is right to make a Statement about what has happened, put as much of that evidence as possible into the public domain, and invite public, media and parliamentary scrutiny of it. That is the right thing to do.
At the end, in government, there is always a balance between making decisions about how to protect lives in a particular situation and recognising that you must have parliamentary and media scrutiny. The previous Government acted in good faith. We have looked at that again and believe that now is the right time for us to come forward, to publicise what happened and to invite comment from everyone. I hope noble Lords will accept that explanation.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, if the reporting is correct, I understand that the date of the super-injunction was 1 September 2023 and that it was granted at the instigation of the then Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps. Eight months later, in debates on the safety of Rwanda Bill, I repeatedly moved an amendment to exclude from deportation to Rwanda Afghans who had served with British forces but had arrived here via irregular routes, no safe route being available. As these debates were taking place, some of the very people I was trying to exclude were being flown here by the United Kingdom without almost any Member of this House or the other place being aware. Why was I not told? Why was your Lordships’ House not told? If that was due to the super-injunction, why did the Government not accept my amendment? If my noble friend cannot answer any of these questions because he was not in government at the time, can he guarantee that we will have a chance to ask those questions and get them answered?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question. My understanding—and there are better lawyers in here than I—is that the Ministers would have believed themselves to be subject to the injunction and the super-injunction, and that would constrain what they would or would not be able to say. But now that we have gone to the High Court to say that we believe the time is right for that super-injunction to be lifted, and the court has agreed with us, we are able to debate and discuss the very points that my noble friend has raised. No doubt these are the questions that, over the coming days, weeks and months, I and others will be asked to account for—quite rightly.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, it has been stated again and again that the person responsible for the loss of data thought that the spreadsheet contained a small number of names, whereas it actually contained a very large number of names. Surely this is irrelevant. It is the fact that it was used on a non-departmental system, not the number of names, that constitutes the breach. This has been presented as an individual failing, but one cannot help but notice that it seems to have originated in the same part of the Ministry of Defence which contemporaneously was making some rather questionable judgments and decisions about the so-called Triples, which must raise questions in people’s minds about the overall degree of supervision and direction of that part of the Ministry of Defence. Can the Minister reassure the House that this is being looked at in that wider context?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble and gallant Lord for this important question, which the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Goldie, also asked, as to how on earth this could have happened. First of all, it was really important to ascertain whether there was any criminal or malign intent. The previous Government were quite right to refer that to the police for investigation. As I have already said, the police found that there was no evidence of any criminal or malign intent. Alongside that, it was referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The answer to the noble and gallant Lord’s question is the whole of the statement that the Information Commissioner’s Office made yesterday about its investigation into what happened, and into the way in which the Ministry of Defence has changed many of the processes that it had in place and its management arrangements to ensure as far as possible that we would not see that again. The importance of that is the independence of the Information Commissioner’s Office looking at what the MoD was doing, rather than the MoD marking its own homework.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, yesterday, the Secretary of State for Defence described the super-injunction as
“unprecedented, uncomfortable and, in many ways, unconscionable”. —[Official Report, Commons, 15/7/25; col. 160.]
Given that, does the Minister agree that if, in the future, super-injunctions are sought, or their renewal is sought, the application will be made only with the consent of not just the relevant Secretary of State but the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Viscount, with his legal understanding and background, makes an interesting point. I cannot confirm whether that would be the right process and way forward but it is certainly something that should be thought about and considered. I will ensure that that suggestion is put into the process, but I cannot guarantee that it is the right way forward. I would need to talk to other colleagues about whether it is, but I thank him for his suggestion.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend and Min AF for their briefing to me yesterday in my role as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. At that briefing, Min AF said that Defence Intelligence undertook an assessment of those individuals who were at risk. We now know from Paul Rimmer’s report that other assessments were taken forward by Defence Intelligence. The Intelligence and Security Committee is the only committee of Parliament that can actually look at these detailed intelligence reports. Contrary to what the former Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, said on Radio 4 this morning, the Intelligence and Security Committee has full oversight of Defence Intelligence and does and can receive current intelligence. I therefore ask my noble friend: will the MoD now release these reports to the committee, or do I, at the meeting of the committee tomorrow, have to formally require the Government to produce these reports to the committee under our powers under the Justice and Security Act 2013?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My noble friend, as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, points to its important role. I would think that every report should be made available to the committee, given that it was set up specifically to give parliamentary scrutiny to difficult intelligence decisions, but under the protection of the way in which it operates. I say to my noble friend that I would expect that to happen—I hope that there is not some process of which I am not aware that means I am not supposed to say so. In all openness, and in trying to be transparent about this, I would think that the Intelligence and Security Committee, given the way in which it operates, should have everything made available to it so that it can consider it and, where necessary, question Ministers and others.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, there are those in the other place who are spreading misinformation about the nature of the checks that were undertaken for those coming from Afghanistan to the United Kingdom. It is in the Statement, but it would be helpful for the House—and the public—if the Minister could reassure us from the Dispatch Box that every individual coming to the United Kingdom under all three of the schemes that were set up, including the one that was not made known until yesterday, was subject to proper national security checks to protect the public.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Indeed. Under both the previous Government and this Government, the fact that you are deemed eligible with respect to the Afghan resettlement programme does not mean that you do not have security checks made upon you. Let me be clear: that is for everybody who is said to be eligible under that scheme to come to the United Kingdom. I remind noble Lords that, if someone comes to the United Kingdom under that scheme, they automatically get indefinite leave to remain. I further remind noble Lords that the second part of that is for people to undergo security checks to make sure that they are not people who would come here and commit crime, or worse. On the particular individual to whom the noble Lord referred, who has made those allegations and said what he has said, if he has specific allegations, he should—as many have said—go to the police to report them, rather than just cast aspersions.
Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)
I think noble Lords in this House would agree that the last Government and this Government acted properly in handling this, in every substantive respect. Unfortunately, that is not how this case, at least in part, is being presented in the media. Part of the media is still presenting this as if there has been some kind of cover-up at some stage, to protect the politicians who were in power at the time. Can the Minister categorically assure the House, on the basis of the evidence he has seen, that that was not the case and that, in looking at this issue, the previous Government acted entirely properly—as have this Government, in my view—at every stage?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and others, the last Government acted in good faith in a way that they believed would protect people who had been put at risk by the data breach. They also went to the court for an injunction. The court itself granted a super-injunction, the thrust of which was to try to protect people from the consequences of having their names inadvertently put into the public domain. The previous Government did that. When we came to power, we decided that we needed to look at this to see whether it was still proportionate and how we should act. On the basis of the Rimmer review, we changed that. I sometimes wonder what the consequences would have been for any Government had that happened and lots of people had been killed.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, the logic behind the basic injunction to protect these vulnerable people in the wake of a catastrophic data breach is understandable and the application is laudable; the super-injunction is less so. Is my noble friend the Minister able to open up a little more? Has he been briefed on the rationale behind the super-injunction, or at least on the Government of the day not applying some time ago, if not immediately, for the super-injunction, which did not protect the sensitive data but the fact that there was a breach? What was the rationale for not seeking to suspend the super-injunction? That is where the constitutional concern lies, for the then and future Government.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I understand my noble friend’s point. I respond with trepidation, because I do not want to get into a legal discussion with her, as her legal knowledge is far greater than mine.
My understanding was that the previous Government asked for an injunction and then the court decided, on the basis of what it was told, that it was necessary for there to be a super-injunction. That was granted by the courts because of the threat that people faced. It was then renewed over a period of time. In the summer of 2024, the High Court suspended the injunction and gave the last Government 21 days to appeal. The Government appealed and the Appeal Court allowed the reimposition of the super-injunction. I can only presume that that was on the basis that the court was persuaded that the threat still existed for those whose data had been inadvertently put into the public domain.
On the basis of knowledge we accumulated over a few months, we decided to undertake the Rimmer review, which gave us the evidence to go back to the court and say that we no longer believed that the injunction was necessary for the protection of those individuals. The court accepted the Government’s new evidence, from the report, that the super-injunction was not necessary. At 12 pm yesterday, the injunction was lifted, and at 12.30 pm, my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary made a Statement in the other place, and we have come here today to make a Statement, which I have no doubt will be the first of many.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, as I am sure the Minister is aware, there are a number of Afghans who are on the run from the Taliban, some of them in Pakistan, terrified about being sent back. The Taliban threatened to hunt down any woman who had played a public role. Could the Minister tell me whether there were any Afghan women on the list that leaked?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
We are trying to contact anybody on the list, whether they are in Afghanistan or Pakistan, who has been designated eligible for the scheme, to ensure that they understand that we will honour the commitment we have made to them. Whether they are in Pakistan or in any other country, we will honour the commitment we have made to them and try to ensure they get passage here. The noble Baroness will understand why I will not say any more than that, as it would compromise people we are trying to bring here.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, I say, if I might, how encouraging it is that the Government are working so closely with the Opposition on this issue. It helps increase respect for and trust in the British political system. It was absolutely right that there should have been a super-injunction. My question is related to the effect of lifting the super-injunction at this stage. The Rimmer report says that there will be no added risk and a human judgment has to be made about whether or not that is the case. Undoubtably, the huge amount of publicity about registering the super-injunction is going to have an effect. Will anybody in the MoD be looking at the lifting of the super-injunction to see what kind of result there has been and whether there has been a significant effect which has increased the risk of vulnerable people?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
We will keep everything under review and look to see what the consequences of the decision we have made are. Following on from what the noble Baroness said about women in Pakistan, our initial focus is to try to ensure that, for everybody who is eligible for the various schemes, we honour the commitment that we made to them. There are still hundreds of people; the number of people still to be relocated under the Afghan response route, which is the scheme that was not publicised, is 600. We are trying to ensure that we know where they are and to bring them here, with approximately 2,700 family members. That, along with our other commitments, is our first priority: to try to ensure that we bring to the UK those we have made a commitment to.
Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, I do not know whether my question is for my noble friend the Minister or for the party opposite. While I can totally understand why an injunction was sought to protect the content of the leak and to protect lives, I would like to understand—perhaps my noble friend can explain—why an injunction was sought to prevent our media reporting the fact of the leak.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
It is difficult for me to comment exactly on the motivation of the last Government, although I believe they acted in good faith. If I put myself in their position, I think the motivation behind the injunction would be to protect not only the names but the fact that the dataset exists, to prevent people looking for such a dataset through the various means by which they would. For us, that was an argument that was made, and, over a period of time, we got to the point where it no longer held. As soon as we had the independent evidence to go to the court, we went to the court, to enable the parliamentary and media scrutiny that there should be of the actions that were and are being taken.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
I am afraid I am a little less sanguine about some of this than others. This catastrophic cock-up—and it was a cock-up, not a criminal event—is a direct consequence of us getting involved in a war in which we should never have got involved in the first place, which we did not have the political will to see through, despite all the efforts of our gallant military, and which left the country in a worse state than it was when we arrived. If it were a one-off, it would perhaps be understandable, but this is a pattern of British policy over the years, from Iraq to Afghanistan and, of course, to Libya. I express a little prayer that we have learned the lessons of that deeper malaise.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I think that we all need to learn lessons from anything that has happened in our history, whatever steps or decisions have been taken. The only thing I would say is that non-decisions and not doing anything also have consequences. It is about balance, and that is a debate and discussion that needs to happen. In terms of the content of today’s debate and future debates, the concentration has to be on what we do both to learn the lessons of what happened under the ARAP scheme and to make sure that we protect as many as possible of the people who stood with us in Afghanistan, whatever the rights and wrongs of that conflict.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, further to the point raised earlier by a noble Lord opposite about the lies, misinformation and fake news being spread, let us not pussyfoot around: it is by Nigel Farage and other members of Reform UK. Can the Minister confirm that this could actually put some of the people concerned in further danger?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My noble friend makes a really good point. Let us be clear: these are people who stood with us, fought with us and, in many cases, died with us. I think that the British public understand and welcome that.
By the end of this scheme, some 56,000 applicants under ARAP, plus their family members, will have been relocated to this country. There is some difficulty in terms of transition when they originally arrive, and so on and so forth—where they are placed and as they assimilate into society—but my understanding is that the British public understand that and are generally very supportive of these people. They are not asylum seekers. They are people who have come to our country because they stood with us; that is an important distinction to make.
The answer to those who would exploit that is to stand up to them and say, “You’re wrong. You’re actually not right. You are not speaking for the British people. The British people understand what we are doing and why we are doing it with respect to Afghanistan”, and so on and so forth. As I said to the noble Lord, making allegations and aspersions about all those who have been resettled under the Afghanistan scheme—“They’re all like this, they’re all like that”—is a total nonsense and not true. That is what I think the majority of people in this country think.
Let me say this: if there is an individual who has raped somebody, stolen from somebody, or worse, that person, whether they are an Afghan or not, should be prosecuted in the courts and sent to jail. I say again, as I said to the noble Lord, that, if the said person has evidence of it, they should go to the police and get them prosecuted, because that is what the British public want as well.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, before I call further business, some noble Lords might wish to take this opportunity to leave.