First Minister not informed after massive UK Gov data leak
A massive data leak and a secret scheme to bring more than 18,000 at-risk Afghans to the UK was kept hidden from Cabinet Ministers and the Scottish Government.
Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed a super injunction banning the reporting of the Ministry of Defence fiasco was to be lifted last week.
He revealed that the personal details of thousands of Afghans who had applied to resettle in the UK after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan had been leaked in 2022.
They had applied to the UK Government's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme – for those who had helped British forces during the 20-year conflict.
It has now emerged personal details of special forces personnel and serving spies were also compromised.
Dave Doogan, the SNP's defence spokesman said: 'One breach of ARAP data could be considered careless albeit to a callous degree given what we were trying to protect the applicants on this list from, but sadly this was one of [several] leaks we know about.
'It therefore has the appearance of institutional incompetence comp-ounded by a galling lack of ministerial grip by the previous secretary of state.'
The Tories' then- defence secretary Ben Wallace was only told of the breach 18 months after it happened when details about the leaked data were mentioned on Facebook.
The MoD set up a secret scheme, the Afghan Response Route (ARR), to relocate those named. About 6900 people were relocated using that scheme, estimated to have cost about £800million.
Wallace personally applied for an injunction to stop the media from reporting the scandal or parliamentarians being informed.
The gagging order was only intended to last four months but when Grant Shapps succeeded Wallace it was upgraded to a superinjunction and remained in place until last week.
The Sunday Mail has now learned that no serving Cabinet ministers other than Wallace, Shapps and then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak were told about the scandal.
One ex-Cabinet minister said: 'We were not informed.'
And despite the MoD setting up an entire scheme to relocate Afghans whose data had been compromised, including housing them in Scotland, they failed to inform Humza Yousaf, who was first minister at the time.
Senior Scottish Government sources said they were not told. An adviser said: 'We knew nothing about it until everyone else found out from John Healey and neither did Humza at the time. I'm sure he also learned about it from watching Parliament TV last week.'
The Labour government applied to extend the superinjunction three times – in May and November last year and this January – and commissioned a review into what options it had to put an end to the ARR.
The report by retired civil servant Paul Rimmer found there was 'little evidence of intent by the Taleban [sic] to conduct a campaign of retribution.'
It went on to say the leaked data 'may not have spread nearly as widely as initially feared. We believe it is unlikely the dataset would be the single, or definitive, piece of information enabling or prompting the Taleban to act.'
Thousands of Afghans have settled in Scotland since the Taliban took power in 2021. But thousands more are still thought to be living in fear there.
Doogan said: 'When the current Secretary of State for Defence took us round the houses on this mess in Parliament his statement included a curious focus on the cost to the taxpayer going forward, with an even more inappropriate stress on any impact on immigration figures. His statement should have been limited to an apology, the steps taken to remedy the apparently sieve-like nature of a government department entrusted with our security and the debt we still owe to those compromised.'
He said the government's reliance on the Rimmer Report showed 'a staggering degree of complacency from members of a bureaucracy whose collective and sustained incompetence, I greatly fear, has left brave Afghans, wherever they are hiding, to endure even greater threats'.
The MoD said: 'As the Defence Secretary outlined in his statement there was a super injunction in place meaning they could not inform others and knowledge was kept to a narrow compartment.'
A Scottish Government spokesman said: 'We were not made aware of this issue before the UK Minister of Defence's statement to the House of Commons.
'This incident is clearly deeply concerning and we urge the UK Government to ensure it prioritises the safety and protection of people affected.'
The 18,714 Afghans fearful of Taliban reprisals due to the leak are unlikely to get compensation. The MoD said any claims will be robustly defended.
This month, Armed Forces minister Luke Pollard announced £1.6million in compensation for a separate incident involving the release of Afghan nationals' data.
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