Afghanistan

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)]

I note that the shadow Secretary of State made great play of the changes and the extra safeguards that Ministers of the previous Government put in place following the breach. I also note that the Secretary of State said he had had to make more changes and introduce new software. That suggests to me that the changes put in place by the previous Government were not good enough. Can I ask him this clearly? Who had knowledge of this incident in the 18 months after the data breach had taken place before it reached Ministers? How were there no checks on anyone in the Department who had access to that sort of data to ensure they were using it properly?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend poses questions to me in the House this afternoon that I simply cannot answer. The events date from a period well before I took office. As he above all will appreciate, new Ministers have no access to the policy advice, the legal assessments, any of the papers or even the threat assessments that previous Government Ministers may have commissioned. I think that that subject is, if I may say so, proper material for the Defence Committee, on which he serves in such a distinguished way, to perhaps take a deeper look at and to call witnesses on who may be in a better position to answer those questions than I am this afternoon.

Finally, my hon. Friend asked about software. I am afraid I am one of the last people to be able to give an authoritative view on the question of cyber-security and up-to-date software, but the nature of this work means that there is a constant requirement for new software and for updating. The fact that we have taken the steps in the past 12 months that our experts and I have regarded as necessary does not necessarily mean that the steps taken by previous Ministers were inadequate. What I can say, however, is that when I was the shadow Defence Secretary, we were aware of and exposed in opposition the building backlogs in casework, the regular data breaches and the broken promises that sadly too often characterised the Afghan relocation schemes, particularly in the early years.