The scandal isn’t just the breach – it’s how they kept it secret, writes David Davis MP

As published by LBC

One of the core principles of public life is openness.

Yet today we learn that, for two years, the Government concealed from Parliament a colossal and potentially unfunded spending commitment. That is not openness. It is a deliberate evasion of democratic scrutiny.

In February 2022, a serious data breach occurred, risking the lives of thousands of Afghans who had served with our armed forces.

The incident was triggered when a Royal Marine sent a spreadsheet to trusted Afghan colleagues. They thought the data included the details of 150 individuals who had applied for asylum here in the UK.

The intention was to check whether those applicants had genuinely served alongside British forces.

In actual fact, the file contained the names, contact details, and, in some cases, family members, of 18,714 Afghan asylum seekers, many of whom worked alongside British forces in Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Defence only became aware of the breach over a year later, when details of some of the individuals started to appear on Facebook.

The exposure of these identities raised immediate safety concerns.

Given the collapse of the previous Western-backed government and the Taliban’s resurgence, those who served with British forces live in fear of reprisals.

There have been several reports of Taliban assassins killing off those they view as Western collaborators, alongside their families.

The notion that a Western government may have directly caused a data breach endangering thousands of our allies is shocking. Any civilised nation should recoil at the thought.

The Government quite rightly pledged to relocate those affected, along with their families, to the UK.

However, when mistakes are made, it’s important they are admitted to and resolved in an open and transparent manner.

This urgent operation to fix this wrong was projected to cost around £7 billion. A huge, potentially uncosted figure that we only heard about today.

This is because, in a controversial move, a superinjunction was issued.

This legal tool wasn’t just strict, it was vast in scope.

It prevented anyone, anywhere, from learning of the existence of the scheme put in place to address the data breach, as well as the mere existence of the injunction itself.

This was, without doubt, an exceptional situation. So, in the first instance, it is arguably justifiable that the super injunction was granted.

But once that is in place, the Government must do everything in its power to correct the issue to allow the injunction to be lifted at the very earliest opportunity.

In the meantime, there must always be a robust and reliable mechanism by which the key parliamentary bodies, the Defence Select Committee and the Intelligence and Security Committee, are confidentially informed so they can fulfil their vital scrutiny role.

This should include allowing those Committees to take evidence, in camera, from key witnesses. The reports of these committees are already reviewed by the Government, and, where necessary, redacted to protect national security.

This episode raises pressing questions about where we draw the line on state secrecy and how we ensure that transparency and accountability are not quietly sidelined, particularly when the decisions in question carry profound consequences for the lives of those affected.

When the immediate danger has passed, and we can be certain that none of those put at risk by this breach are still caught in the crosshairs of the Taliban, we must have a frank reckoning.

Are we really prepared to let a tool of such draconian power operate beyond the reach of democratic scrutiny?