Afghanistan

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.