Thousands of Afghans brought to UK in secret £850,000,000 scheme after data leak
Around 19,000 Afghan nationals who helped support British forces had their personal details revealed when a dataset was released 'in error' in February 2022.
More than two years later, in April 2024 – three months before the 2024 election – a secret relocation scheme called the Afghanistan Response Route was set up.
It is understood this programme has cost around £400 million so far, and is projected to cost around £850 million once completed.
Additional legal costs and compensation are expected to add millions more to the total bill. More Trending
It took more than a year for the Ministry of Defence to become aware of the data breach, which was the result of an apparent mistake by a defence official.
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The extent of the issue was discovered when excerpts from the dataset were posted to a Facebook group in August 2023.
Details of the scheme can only be revealed now, after an unprecedented superinjunction was lifted.
The court order prevented the media, Parliament and the public from finding out about the Afghanistan Response Route.
It is thought to be the first time the government has ever used such an order against the media.
Court documents show the Ministry of Defence only initially asked for the superinjunction to stay in place for four months.
But it took more than two years for it to finally be lifted at the High Court today.
Judges said in 2024 that between 80,000 and 100,000 people could be at risk of harassment, torture or death if the Taliban obtained the data in the breach.
But an independent review commissioned by the government in January this year concluded the data breach was 'unlikely to profoundly change the existing risk profile of individuals named'.
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