‘Serious departmental error’: UK reveals $535 million secret scheme to relocate 19,000 Afghans after data leak
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "‘Serious departmental error’: UK reveals $535 million secret scheme to relocate 19,000 Afghans after data leak")
Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire on August 28, 2021, as the troops return from assisting with the evacuation of people from Kabul airport in Afghanistan. Photograph: (AFP)
The minister said that the programme has now been closed. “From today, there will be no new ARR offers of relocation to Britain, the route is now closed,” he said. Healey, Labour’s opposition defence spokesman, was briefed about the programme in 2023.
The United Kingdom on Tuesday (Jul 15) revealed a secret scheme involving thousands of Afghans, who worked for the UK government, and their families were relocated to Britain after a data breach in 2022 that put their lives at risk. Speaking in the parliament after the UK High Court lifted a gag order banning reports of the scheme, Defence Minister John Healey described how a “serious departmental error” could have put the lives of nearly 19,000 Afghans “at stake”.
In February 2022, a spreadsheet containing names and details of about 19,000 people from Afghanistan seeking relocation to the UK was accidentally leaked by a British official, Healey said. This incident happened just six months after the Taliban took over Kabul.
‘Serious departmental error’
“This was a serious departmental error,” said Healey, adding that “lives may have been at stake.” The previous Conservative government launched a secret programme to help those “judged to be at the highest risk of reprisals by the Taliban,” he said.
Under the programme, the Afghan Response Route, some 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have been brought to the UK or are in transit at a cost of around £400 million ($535.7 million), Healey said. They are among 36,000 Afghans who were accepted by Britain under different schemes since the fall of Kabul in 2021.
Healey, Labour’s opposition defence spokesman, was briefed about the programme in 2023. However, the Conservative government asked a court to impose a “super-injunction” to ban any mention of the scheme in parliament or by the media. The Labour Party came into power in July last year, when the scheme was in full swing.
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Minister offers ‘sincere apology’
The defence secretary offered a “sincere apology” for the data breach that “should never have happened. In his statement to the Commons, he said that he felt “deeply concerned about the lack of transparency” around the data breach, adding that he had been “deeply uncomfortable to be constrained from reporting to this house”.
“Ministers decided not to tell parliamentarians at an earlier stage about the data incident, as the widespread publicity would increase the risk of the Taliban obtaining the dataset,” he added.
After becoming the defence minister in the new Labour government, Haley ordered a review of the scheme, which concluded there was “very little intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution.”
The minister said that the programme has now been closed. “From today, there will be no new ARR offers of relocation to Britain, the route is now closed,” he said. “However, we will honour the 600 invitations already made to any named person still in Afghanistan and their immediate family. When this nation makes a promise, we should keep it.”
