Revealed: How Tories tore themselves apart over Afghan leak

Telegraph

17 hours ago

The Home Office tried to stop a £7bn plan to grant asylum to 24,000 Afghans because of fears over national security, The Telegraph has learnt.
The Treasury and the Foreign Office were also among several government departments that expressed serious concerns about the secret scheme, but were overruled after defence ministers used 'emotional blackmail' to force through the plan, it is claimed.
On Tuesday, a High Court judge lifted a super-injunction that had prevented the media from reporting anything about the asylum scheme for almost two years. The injunction also meant that the row boiling at the very centre of Government over its merits has also gone unreported until now.
Sir Keir Starmer has said he was 'angry' when he was told about a data breach that led to the relocation scheme being set up under the Conservative government in 2023.
Multiple sources have told The Telegraph that the plan to airlift thousands of Afghans to the UK – codenamed Operation Rubific – caused a major row within government, with senior Cabinet ministers objecting to it on the grounds of security, cost and practicality.
Among those who raised objections were Sir James Cleverly, who was foreign secretary and then home secretary during the time the row was raging; Suella Braverman, who preceded Sir James in the Home Office; Michael Gove, the communities secretary, and Laura Trott, the chief secretary to the Treasury, it is understood.
The row began in August 2023, when Sir Ben Wallace, the then defence secretary, was told about a data breach that had leaked the names of Afghans who had applied for asylum through the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) for those who had worked with the British Armed Forces during the war in the country. Excerpts of the list of names had appeared on social media.
The data was accidentally leaked by a Royal Marine who was working under the command of Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins, then the director of Special Forces.
Sir Ben applied for a High Court injunction to prevent the media – who had heard about the leak – from reporting it, and Operation Rubific was put in place to speed up the process of granting asylum to those whose lives were deemed to be at risk as a result of the leak.
He resigned as defence secretary the day before the injunction was granted, and Grant Shapps, who took over the role, delegated the task of running Operation Rubific to James Heappey, the armed forces minister.
On Mr Shapps's first day in the job, the injunction was granted by a High Court judge and upgraded to a super-injunction, meaning no one, including the media and MPs, could mention that an injunction existed.
Minister's 'emotional blackmail'
From the very beginning, Mr Heappey, a former Army major who fought in Afghanistan, clashed with Cabinet heavyweights as he tried to get the secret resettlement scheme up and running.
Mrs Braverman, who had been attorney general before her elevation to the Home Office, 'got into serious arguments' with the Ministry of Defence, one source said, telling Mr Heappey she 'just didn't believe' that all of the people on the leaked list were genuine claimants.
In common with Sir James, she was concerned about the threat to national security if Taliban members or sympathisers who had applied for asylum were brought to the UK.
Ministry of Defence sources insist they set a high bar for eligibility, and that anyone who was known to have Taliban connections 'even decades ago' was crossed off the list.
However, one former minister claimed Mr Heappey 'had a religious fervour' about the scheme and would 'constantly try to emotionally blackmail people' by referring to his service in Afghanistan and the need to protect those who had helped British forces.
A friend of Mr Heappey defended him, saying he had been 'passionate' about the fate of the Afghans, to whom he felt the UK owed a moral responsibility, and that it was 'sad' if former colleagues regarded that as blackmail.
Mrs Braverman was also furious at the suggestion that those brought to the UK would have to be housed in Home Office-funded asylum hotels, as she had managed to shut down about 100 such hotels and wanted to trumpet her success.
'Suella basically told the MoD that if they wanted to bring people here, they would have to house them in empty barracks on MoD land,' said one source.
Other ministers expressed reservations about housing Afghans on military bases because of the danger that the Taliban might have infiltrated them, and for months there was a stand-off between the departments.
In one particularly explosive meeting, Mrs Braverman accused Mr Heappey and his department of being 'totally incompetent', which led to Mr Heappey filing a complaint against her.
Mrs Braverman said in a statement posted online on Wednesday: 'In all this disgraceful betrayal of the people by their own Government, I feel only shame.
'I, and a handful of others, fought this, but we failed to stop it.'
My statement on the Afghan leak. pic.twitter.com/c1Wg5jj191
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) July 16, 2025
Sir James, meanwhile, was annoyed that the cost of the scheme was being taken out of the Foreign Office's overseas development budget and warned that the scheme was untenable because of the sheer numbers of people involved.
In the Treasury, there were concerns about the 'potentially staggering' cost of the scheme. Laura Trott, who was in charge of public spending as chief secretary to the Treasury from Nov 2023 until the general election in July last year, raised objections about the amount of taxpayers' money that was being spent on the scheme, what the final numbers would be once family members were taken into account, and how many of those brought to Britain had genuinely worked with British forces.
Ministers were told that if all 18,800 people on the leaked list were granted asylum, the true number requiring asylum would be more than 100,000 once family members were taken into account.
In the end, the Government signed off on a £7 billion plan to offer asylum to 24,000 people, with John Healey, the Labour Defence Secretary, saying on Wednesday that being on the 'kill list' did not give people the automatic right to asylum.
Mr Gove was concerned about how local authorities were going to find homes, school places, doctors and other public services for so many Afghans and their families.
Mr Heappey, one source said, found himself 'in a crowd of one' in high-security Cobra meetings with senior ministers as he tried to persuade them to back the scheme.
One source said: 'James had a pretty tough time in Cobra meetings. The other government departments wanted the MoD to have to deal with everything, they didn't want any of it to land on their plate, and ministers were defending their own turf. The Government was pretty dysfunctional over this issue.
'James would respond by saying the MoD wasn't an immigration agency or a social services provider, so it couldn't do it alone. It was all quite toxic.'
Sir Ben has defended his decision to seek the injunction, saying in an article for The Telegraph that it was necessary to protect lives.
He has also pointed out that he applied for a four-month injunction, and that the day after he left office the High Court upgraded this to a super-injunction, which makes it an offence for anyone to divulge even that an injunction has been granted. The court later extended the injunction.
Mrs Braverman, whose husband Rael quit his membership of Reform UK on Wednesday after the party's former chairman blamed Mrs Braverman for Operation Rubific, said: 'There is much more that needs to be said about the conduct of the MoD, both ministers and officials, and the House of Commons is the right place to do so.
'This episode exposes everything wrong with the Westminster establishment. The state apparatus thinks it can hide its failures behind legal technicalities while ordinary people pay the price. I understand your anger, and I share it. The people who have run this country so badly need to take a long, hard look at themselves. Those responsible must be held accountable, and the system that enabled this cover-up must be dismantled.'