‘I'd do it again', says Grant Shapps over secret Afghan scheme
The senior Tory politician, who was defence secretary when the injunction was first put in place, said the move to keep data breach a secret was 'entirely justified' to protect the lives of thousands of Afghans.
He made his first public comments on the data debacle after it emerged that the leak had also included the details of more than 100 Britons, including spies and members of the special forces.
Sir Grant said he would 'walk over hot coals to protect those guys' and the super-injunction was needed in order to keep people safe.
It was revealed earlier this week when the super-injunction was lifted that a dataset containing the personal information of 25,000 Afghans who had applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) had been released 'in error' in February 2022 by a defence official.
The Tory government became aware of the leak in August 2023 and Sir Ben Wallace, the then defence secretary, made the decision to apply for an injunction.
Sir Grant took over as defence secretary on August 31 2023 and the High Court granted a super-injunction at the start of September.
The government established a covert relocation scheme to bring the affected Afghan soldiers and their family members to the UK, amid fears they could be targeted by the Taliban, at a cost of £7billion.
Around 4,500 people have been brought to the UK or are in transit so far under the secret route.
'Would walk over hot coals to protect those guys'
Sir Grant defended the decision to use a super-injunction to keep the breach and the relocation scheme a secret.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Friday morning: 'I would just make this point, that there are things that the state just has to do secretly otherwise you would get to the point where people would say 'well why aren't you releasing the nuclear codes?'
'You simply can't release everything and this was one of those times where, faced with a decision of protecting lives, both Brits and Afghanis, I would do the same thing all over again.
'I would walk over hot coals to protect those guys.'
The use of a super-injunction by the government to keep something so significant a secret has prompted major questions about transparency after Parliament was kept in the dark.
Sir Grant said he was 'surprised' that the super-injunction was kept in place for so long.
He also said he would support the initial defence assessment of the data leak which formed the basis of the super-injunction being handed over to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament for scrutiny.
Asked the question about sharing the document with the committee, Sir Grant said: 'I will say two things. First of all, yes I would. And secondly this injunction, the super-injunction, was in place for longer than I was defence secretary, so it has been in place a lot longer under the current government than it was under us.
'I am surprised it has lasted quite so long. My expectation was, as the risks start to lessen over time and people are removed from the theatre, from Afghanistan, and measures are taken to protect the Brits on the list, that it would carry on quite so long.
'I'd thought that it was probably going to come to an end last summer or the autumn perhaps at maximum.
'So I am surprised it has taken quite so long and it is absolutely right that those committees are able to look into it properly.'
Sir Grant said he believed the public understood that 'there are times where you simply have to act in the most maximalist way in order to stop people from being murdered and executed and that is quite simply what properly happened in this case'.
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