Latest news with #Ministry of Defence
Times
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
How spies and soldiers will face the blame over Afghan data breach
On a dark winter's day in December 2023, John Healey was escorted into a secure briefing room at the Ministry of Defence and handed a brown envelope. The shadow defence secretary had just received a superinjunction, prohibiting him from repeating a word of what he was about to be told by James Heappey, the armed forces minister. The contents of their discussion would not become public for another 18 months, as the Conservative government used the courts to prevent The Times and other newspapers from revealing a catastrophic data leak involving thousands of Afghans seeking refuge in Britain from the Taliban. Healey left the building shocked by the gravity of the situation, knowing he would almost certainly have to handle the fallout when the veil of secrecy was finally lifted. That moment arrived on Tuesday. In parliament, Healey, now the defence secretary, told MPs how a defence official had inadvertently leaked a list containing the details of nearly 19,000 Afghans in February 2022. It also contained the names of more than 100 British special forces troops, MI6 spies and military officers who had vouched for some of the Afghans. The previous government's response had been to spend hundreds of millions of pounds bringing several thousand impacted individuals and their families to the UK via a secret Afghan Response Route (ARR), without parliament or voters knowing. Sir Keir Starmer and shadow senior cabinet ministers had been looped in shortly after entering government but Healey's wife only discovered what her husband had been dealing with when he delivered the statement. After days of recriminations and Conservative buck-passing, many questions around the scandal remain unanswered this weekend. In Westminster, the defence committee has vowed to investigate the cover-up, with Sir Ben Wallace and Sir Grant Shapps, the former defence secretaries, likely to be interrogated when MPs return from summer recess. • Grant Shapps 'trying to rewrite history' on Afghan leak While both have defended the superinjunction, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister who presided over it, has not said a word and is overseas. The intelligence and security committee (ISC), a body made up of peers and MPs that scrutinises the UK's spy agencies, is furious it was kept in the dark and has demanded a host of government documents around the leak and the cover-up. It has statutory powers, and will launch its own inquiry in due course. Lord Beamish, who chairs the committee, is equally incensed by MI6's failure to inform the committee of the potential disclosure of its agents' identities. Despite providing quarterly updates to the ISC on any major developments, the service failed to mention the issue at any point. The ISC has demanded answers from MI6 and the committee is set to summon Sir Richard Moore, the outgoing chief of the intelligence service, or his successor, Blaise Metreweli, to explain the omission. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, has also commissioned a review into how the government gagged senior parliamentary figures, himself and the Lord Speaker included, and the constitutional issues this raises. He hopes to update MPs either on Monday or Tuesday. But the biggest unknown is the long-term impact on public perception of parliament, the two main political parties, and British democracy itself. By the time Healey was ushered into the MoD's briefing room in 2023 he had already been made aware of a series of failings relating to the Afghan evacuation. In September 2021, a month after Kabul fell to the Taliban, he had pressed Wallace, the defence secretary, over a human error that resulted in the personal information of 265 Afghans who had worked alongside British troops being shared with hundreds of others who were on the same email distribution list. Wallace apologised and insisted action had been taken to prevent it from happening again; earlier this year, the Afghans affected were told they would be able to claim up to £4,000 in compensation. • How top military chief's role in Afghan data leak was hidden But by August 2023, Healey had identified a total of four data breaches associated with the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap), the main route for bringing over personnel who had served alongside the UK armed forces. On August 13, he released them to the media in a 'Dossier of Failure'. He would not know until later, but the following day the MoD discovered it had another leak — this time bigger than any before. It was decided three months later that he should be informed. Healey's allies believe this was only because he was continually grilling Tory ministers on problems with the Arap scheme. Healey received one more briefing on the secret Afghan operation in opposition, early in the new year. By the time he entered the MoD as defence secretary in July last year, the scheme had been running for months. But beyond a monthly trickle of Afghan relocations to the UK, little had changed. Healey believed it needed to, and was alarmed not just at what his predecessors had left him to deal with, but the apparent secretive mindset that had set in among civil servants. This complaint has been echoed by a number of senior aides who worked for Sunak in No 10. 'For the scale of catastrophe it was, I was very surprised at the lack of urgency from officials in getting people out [of Afghanistan],' said one. 'There was quite a churn of officials working on it.' Healey began to push for a reassessment of the threat posed by the Taliban to the Afghans on the list — the reason for the superinjunction remaining in place — but even this took months of internal debate within Whitehall to get started. • Who knew about the Afghan data breach — and who was in the dark? At the beginning of this year, Paul Rimmer, a retired deputy chief of defence intelligence, was finally commissioned to lead a review. By June, Rimmer had determined that the leaked document had not spread as widely as feared and that its value to the Taliban, as well as its risk to the Afghans named in it, had diminished sufficiently. Decisions were finally made: only a portion of the Afghans had a legitimate right to come to Britain, many of whom had already arrived. The secret route would end and the MoD would no longer fight to keep the superinjunction in place. Healey's team believe that Tory ministers were genuinely determined to protect the Afghans when they first sought the superinjunction. But as time wore on, they suspect a desire to protect reputations crept into the decision-making process. While Shapps has in recent days expressed 'surprise' that it lasted as long as it did, they point out that last summer he successfully appealed against a decision to lift the superinjunction, right in the middle of the general election campaign. Healey is determined that the culture of cover-ups and the persistent issues with data security — stretching well beyond Afghanistan — are permanently resolved in the MoD. A new chief information officer has been brought in and, in January, new software was introduced on MoD computers to more securely share data. Recently a review of the Afghan data leak was completed to ensure information was being held at the right security classification and in the right location. That no one has been sacked for the scandal has also raised uncomfortable questions about accountability. To this end, Healey's long-term defence reforms will establish clearer chains of command. Under a new military strategic headquarters, the chiefs of the RAF, army and navy will formally report to the chief of defence staff for the first time, with Healey overseeing a department more clearly focused on policy development. Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute, is also joining Healey as his strategic director and will be responsible for challenging and reviewing all major decisions. Chalmers is hugely experienced in foreign, defence and security policy: he was previously a visiting professor in the war studies department at King's College London and served as an adviser to Jack Straw when he was foreign secretary. Healey has described him as a 'one-man intellectual powerhouse'. An MoD source said: 'We're continuing to drive the biggest defence reforms in 50 years — that means proper accountability, better transparency for parliament and a stronger internal challenge to the MoD status quo.' And yet, the mistakes keep happening. This weekend, The Sunday Times has revealed how a publication associated with a senior British Army regiment has been routinely disclosing the identities of special forces personnel in its ranks. The MoD was warned about the security breach two months ago, and yet the documents are still online after they initially appeared to have been taken down. Healey has demanded an investigation. In No 10, Starmer's aides are also contemplating their next steps, amid growing calls for a public inquiry. This has not yet been ruled out, although Downing Street believes the defence committee and the ISC should be given space to conduct their own investigations. However, the wider consequences of the Afghan debacle will persist. According to government sources, approximately 24,000 impacted Afghans and their families will come to the UK via all available schemes. Of those, 4,500 Afghans have already arrived or are en route via the ARR and given indefinite leave to remain. This allows them to apply for British residency and, ultimately, citizenship. A further 2,400 have been earmarked for relocation over the coming months, with the total costs associated with the secret route expected to hit £850 million. On average, impacted Afghans have brought eight family members with them — the highest number is reported to have been 22 — placing added pressure on already tight housing stocks and stretched public services. Officials had originally hoped they would bring only their wife and two children. They have each been offered 'transitional accommodation' lasting up to nine months. Many of the Afghans clandestinely flown to the UK were originally put up in disused army barracks, under an operation codenamed 'Lazurite'. In 2023, Weeton Barracks near Blackpool was used to house more than 50 families, although it is unclear whether they were individuals caught up in the leak. Many Afghans were then moved into service accommodation, which is usually set aside for military personnel and their families. At its peak, 12 per cent of military homes were being used, although that has fallen below 2 per cent. The MoD has now decided to end the scheme. Others, however, have been dispersed to various local authorities around the country to be housed, including, in some cases, hotels. The secrecy around the Afghans has made locating them difficult, although Bracknell Forest council in Berkshire, which covers the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, said it had received about 320 new Afghan residents alone this year. The sudden influx appears to have created tension with locals. In May, the council was forced to issue an explanatory note saying: 'The council and its partners are aware of some misinformation circulating regarding our new Afghan families. While this misinformation is being circulated by a small number of individuals, we want to make sure all our residents have the facts. We would like to reiterate that our new families are not illegal immigrants, asylum seekers or refugees. They have indefinite leave to remain and so are now UK residents.' A year on from a summer of rioting prompted by the Southport atrocity, there are growing concerns over the national impact on community cohesion — a point also raised in Rimmer's report. No 10 argues the government's response has reduced the possibility of such violence reoccurring, noting that the strategy for announcing the Afghan leak drew heavily on Starmer's response to the Southport riots and the delayed charging of Axel Rudakubana with terror and biological weapons offences. A senior source said: 'We know we are operating in a very low trust environment, which is why we are being as transparent as humanly possible.' A YouGov poll published on Wednesday suggests this approach is working, with 49 per cent of respondents supporting the superinjunction and the need to protect the Afghans, compared with 20 per cent who disapproved. However, the attacks on police officers during violent protests outside an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex, over an unrelated arrest of an asylum seeker on suspicion of alleged sexual assaults in the town, has highlighted how quickly things could escalate again. Luke Tryl, director of the think tank More in Common, said: 'The leak is likely to deepen voters' frustrations about the competence of government and the civil service, confirming their suspicions that they are just not up to the job.' For now, the greatest risk for Starmer is that the Afghan leak entrenches the belief that Britain's political system is broken, regardless of which party is in charge.
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The Independent
14 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Chaos and fear as Afghans exposed in huge data breach left in limbo by UK
When the email from the Ministry of Defence dropped into his inbox, Qargha's heart leapt. After an agonising four-year wait, he hoped that this would finally be confirmation that he could escape the threat of the Taliban and be brought to safety in the UK. Instead, it was news that the government had exposed his personal information – and kept him in the dark about it for nearly two years. Already in fear for his life, he will now take extra precautions even when going for a walk or shopping. He is one of around 18,700 Afghans whose names and contact details were exposed in the catastrophic data leak, which happened when an MoD official emailed a secret database to trusted contacts in February 2022. The blunder, which has resulted in some 16,000 Afghans affected by the breach being relocated to Britain as part of a covert operation, was discovered after someone posted parts of the database online in August 2023. News of the breach prompted the government to use an unprecedented superinjunction to keep the breach a secret in an attempt to block further spread of the information, meaning that even those affected could not be told. Ministers had argued that 100,000 people's lives were at risk of Taliban reprisals if news of the data breach got out, but a government-commissioned review later concluded that being identified on the dataset was unlikely to constitute sole grounds for targeting. Just before the gagging order was finally lifted on Tuesday, the MoD scrambled to email tens of thousands of Afghans, warning them their data was compromised. Desperate for news that MoD caseworkers had finally made a decision on his case, Qargha, a former member of the Afghan security forces who is still in Afghanistan, thought the email would finally confirm his eligibility approval. But he was shocked when he discovered the truth. He told The Independent: ' I am very concerned about the leak of my personal information and I understood more about it from Afghan International TV as well. They said this leak will put many lives at risk. 'My day-to-day life will be harder now. I am living in a safe house and I know that today or tomorrow, if I need to go to the hospital or seek help for anything, I will have to be more cautious now. I am putting restrictions on myself – being more cautious about going shopping, going for a walk, going to the park or going for a haircut'. The former soldier applied for sanctuary in the UK in 2021, but he was rejected along with many members of former Afghan specialist units in the summer of 2023. During that time, one UK special forces liaison officer oversaw the blanket rejection of 1,585 such applications. Qargha is waiting on a review of that decision, and the years of limbo are taking their toll as his agonising wait continues. 'My old home has already been raided twice. It is impacting me mentally, having to wait for so long. Everyone knows us and the work we did against the Taliban before the takeover, so my life is hard, stress level is up, everything is up,' he said. One former member of the Afghan special forces unit, ATF444, who served alongside the British yet left behind after the withdrawal, is also still waiting for a review of his application for help. Akthar said that after he received the two alert emails from the MoD, he had 'a lot of questions'. 'I don't understand, this is not a third-world country. This is the UK, where access to technology is high. How have they managed to leak this information?', he told The Independent. 'We are already at risk and they have put us at more risk. There are lots of questions but what can we do about it - nothing. 'Whatever caution we were taking before, we should triple that caution. At this moment, the fear is like hell. 'My moving around has become restricted a lot. Before, if I was taking 50 per cent precaution for my safety, I need to make sure I'm doing it 100 per cent,' he added. Last week, Taliban members began doing door-to-door raids of the district he was in, so he jumped in a car with a friend and drove for 12 hours to a different province, he said. He also needs to try to work to get money to support members of his family. 'It's making me desperate,' he said, adding: 'My family has not done anything to anybody and they don't deserve to die'. Another former member of the Afghan security forces said his 'stress changed to depression' on receiving the bright red warning message, alerting him that his information had been breached. 'My stress level is very high, all I can do is wait for my application to be processed,' he said. The Independent revealed on Wednesday that hundreds of Afghan special forces soldiers had had their details leaked in the MoD breach. Some 18,500 people affected by the leak have been brought to the UK or are on their way, while 5,400 have received approval letters but still need to be evacuated. Ministers have said that, while the MoD's resettlement scheme (Arap) has been closed to new applicants, existing cases will still be processed. But no time frame for the evacuations has been given, leaving those affected in limbo. An MoD spokesperson said: 'We will not comment on individual cases. 'This Government is fully committed to delivering on the pledge made by Parliament to those in Afghanistan who are eligible to relocate and resettle. 'We aim to see through our commitment to those eligible under the ARP to its completion by the end of the parliament. Eligible Afghans and their families will continue to arrive in the UK for the foreseeable future.'
Arab News
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Arab News
UK to fight compensation claims after massive Afghanistan data leak
London: The UK will resist paying compensation to thousands of Afghans caught up in a data leak scandal, The Times reported on Saturday. The names and details of around 100,000 people in Afghanistan who worked with UK Armed Forces as part of the US-led coalition in the country were accidentally revealed online by a Ministry of Defence employee in February 2022. It led to a massive covert program to bring large numbers of Afghans to Britain for fear they could be targeted by the Taliban, it emerged this week. But the MoD will fight five-figure claims against it for endangering the lives of Afghans caught up in the leak following a review by former civil servant Paul Rimmer, ordered by Defence Secretary John Healey, which suggested that the risk to their safety had 'diminished.' Lawyers for the ministry say taxpayers have already paid enough after billions of pounds were set aside for the repatriation scheme of around 24,000 Afghan personnel and their families to the UK, a source told The Times. Thousands of Afghans still trapped in their country have been left in fear for their safety after learning about the data breach on July 15. The leak and accompanying repatriation scheme were kept from public knowledge after the government used a legal device called a superinjunction to prevent reporting on it. Before the superinjunction was lifted by a court, the government announced a small compensation scheme for victims of a separate, smaller data leak from 2021, of £4,000 ($5,364) per person. The MoD will contest compensation claims by law firms representing Afghans affected by the 2022 breach. The biggest lawsuit, brought by Barings Law, involves over 1,000 Afghan clients. The Times said it has seen WhatsApp messages sent to people in the UK, Afghanistan and Pakistan urging them to register with Barings to join the lawsuit. The firm's head of data protection, Adnan Malik, said around 100 people a day are signing up to sue the MoD, and the firm expects to be able to win payouts of 'at least five figures' for those who can prove they had been contacted by the ministry confirming that their details were leaked. Law firm Leigh Day is also suing the government on behalf of hundreds of Afghan clients. 'We are currently acting for a number of existing clients and are also being approached each day by dozens more people who have been affected,' Sean Humber, a partner at the firm, told The Times. The MoD confirmed that around 5,400 Afghans still in their country are eligible for flights to the UK under the Afghan Response Route and the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy. It expects to have relocated all those deemed at risk from the Taliban and with a right to come to Britain under its various programs by 2029. An MoD spokesman told The Times: 'We will robustly defend against any legal action or compensation. The independent Rimmer Review concluded that it is highly unlikely that merely being on the spreadsheet would be grounds for an individual to be targeted, and this is the basis on which the court lifted its super injunction this week.'
The Independent
21 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Questions raised over MoD amid data breaches
Hundreds of Ministry of Defence data breaches have been revealed, with 569 incidents recorded in 2023-24, an increase from the previous year. One significant breach last year involved the names and bank details of 272,000 staff being compromised after a contractor-operated system was hacked. The MoD was fined £350,000 for a data breach related to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, which exposed up to 100,000 Afghans and potentially British service personnel to risk. Lord Beamish, chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, has questioned why highly sensitive information was stored on low-security systems, expressing concerns about the MoD's data handling. Both the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Commons defence select committee are set to investigate the breaches, with calls for greater accountability and improved data protection measures.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Spies and SAS personnel among 100-plus Britons included in Afghan data leak
Details of members of the SAS are among more than 100 Britons named in the database of 18,700 Afghans, the accidental leak of which by a defence official led to thousands being secretly relocated to the UK. Defence sources said the highly sensitive document contained names and email addresses belonging to people sponsoring or linked to some individual cases. Personal information about MI6 officers was also included. The identities of members of the SAS and MI6 are a closely guarded secret, and the possibility that such information could have ended up in the public domain was a source of significant official concern. SAS and other special forces officers were involved in assessing whether Afghans who said they were members of the elite 333 and 444 units, known as the Triples, were allowed to come to the UK. Defence sources said the dataset also referred to a 'secret route' that Afghans could use to come to the UK. This week it emerged that the Ministry of Defence had obtained a superinjunction preventing the disclosure of the leak and that a £2bn-plus scheme had been created to relocate some Afghans affected by the breach to the UK to protect them from the Taliban. That superinjunction lapsed on Tuesday, when a high court judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, concluded after a government review that the threat to the 18,700 Afghans was no longer very significant. Some of the remaining restrictions were relaxed on Thursday after another court hearing. The MoD said it would be possible to publish additional descriptions about contents of the database. In a statement on Tuesday, after the unprecedented superinjunction was lifted, the defence secretary, John Healey, offered a 'sincere apology' on behalf of the government for the data breach. He later told the Commons that the spreadsheet contained 'names and contact details of applicants and, in some instances, information relating to applicants' family members, and in a small number of cases the names of members of parliament, senior military officers and government officials were noted as supporting the application'. 'This was a serious departmental error,' he added. Parliament's intelligence and security committee (ISC), which monitors the UK spy agencies, said it would scrutinise the affair, following on from an inquiry announced by the Commons defence select committee. The ISC asked that all intelligence assessments that had been shared with high court in secret now be shared with the committee. Its chair, Lord Beamish, asked why 'material relating to the data loss' could not be shared with the committee early given that it routinely reviews classified material. The MoD welcomed the proposed review. 'Defence intelligence and the wider department have been instructed by the defence secretary to give their full support to the ISC and all parliamentary committees,' a spokesperson said. The decision to seek an injunction preventing the disclosure of the data breach was first taken by Ben Wallace, then the Conservative defence secretary, in August 2023, when the MoD first became aware that the personal information had leaked to a Facebook group. A judge then ordered that the injunction remain secret, turning it into a rarely used superinjunction. Wallace's immediate successor, Grant Shapps, sought to maintain the gagging order until the general election in July 2024 while developing a secret relocation scheme for about 15,000 Afghans affected. The day-to-day task for developing the scheme was handed to one of Shapps's deputies, James Heappey, the then minister for the armed forces. On Thursday, in a social media posting, Heappey said the scheme was discussed in the cabinet's domestic an economic affairs committee. He said the committee 'tried to extend entitlements by smallest number possible', as led by legal advice, with little resistance from other members of the government. 'I don't recall fierce opposition. There was frustrated resignation that it was necessary,' he said. It can now be reported that the leaked data included the names, email addresses and phone numbers for thousands of Afghans who had applied to come to the UK under an existing relocation scheme designed for those who had helped the British military. In some instances the data contained further written information about their case and status of their application – focused on whether they had in fact helped the UK or British forces in Afghanistan – but it did not contain addresses or photographs. This week Afghans affected by the breach received a message addressed from the UK government, sent in English, Pashto and Dari, that warned the recipient's email address had been used to make a resettlement application and that some personal data may have been compromised. Details of the breach were limited, but recipients of the email – some of whom remain in hiding from the Taliban in Afghanistan – were advised 'not to take phone calls or respond to messages or emails from unknown contacts' and to limit who could see their social media profiles.
