Thousands of Afghans who worked with the UK government and their families were brought to Britain in a secret programme after a 2022 data breach put their lives at risk, a minister revealed Tuesday.
Defence Minister John Healey unveiled the scheme to parliament after the UK High Court on Tuesday lifted a super-gag order banning reports of the events.
In February 2022 a spreadsheet containing the names and details of almost 19,000 Afghans who had asked to be relocated to Britain was accidentally leaked by a UK official just six months after the Taliban seized Kabul, Healey said.
“This was a serious departmental error,” Healey said, adding “lives may have been at stake”.
The previous Conservative government put in place a secret programme to help those “judged to be at the highest risk of reprisals by the Taliban”, he said.
Some 900 Afghans and 3,600 family members have now been brought to Britain or are in transit under the programme known as the Afghan Response Route at a cost of around £400 million, Healey said.
They are among some 36,000 Afghans who have been accepted by Britain under different schemes since the August 2021 fall of Kabul.
As Labour’s opposition defence spokesman Healey was briefed on the scheme in December 2023, but the Conservative government asked a court to impose a “super-injunction” banning any mention of it in parliament or by the press.
When Labour came to power in July 2024, the scheme was in full swing, but Healey said 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.
Healey set up a review of the scheme on becoming defence minister in the new Labour government. This concluded there was “very little intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution”.
The Afghan Response Route has now been closed, the minister said, apologising for the data breach which “should never have happened.”
