Starmer: Serious questions to answer over data breach

Sir Keir Starmer has vented his fury over the cover-up of the catastrophic data breach that risked the lives of up to 100,000 Afghans, as it emerged no one had faced action over the huge blunder.

- DAVID MADDOX POLITICAL EDITOR

The prime minister said the leak should never have happened and that Tory ministers have “serious questions to answer”, a day after an unprecedented superinjunction was lifted.

Sir Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary at the time the initial legal order was sought, earlier said he took full responsibility for the leak, which happened when an MoD official released a spreadsheet containing the names of 18,000 Afghans “in error”.

But questions have been raised over why no one has been fired over the breach, which risked putting the lives of those with links to UK forces in danger of reprisals from the Taliban, amid calls for further investigation.

The chair of a powerful Commons committee has written to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), applying pressure for a rethink on its decision not to investigate the breach, which cost the taxpayer billions in relocating thousands of affected Afghans to the UK.

At the start of a tense Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Sir Keir expressed his anger, telling MPs: “We warned in opposition about Conservative management of this policy and yesterday, the defence secretary set out the full extent of the failings that we inherited: a major data breach, a superinjunction, a secret route that has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds. Ministers who served under the party opposite have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen.”

He suggested the Conservatives should “welcome” scrutiny from the Commons defence committee, which has vowed to investigate.

In a dramatic intervention just hours later, right-wing former home secretary Suella Braverman revealed that there were splits in the Tory government over how to deal with the breach and said she had opposed the superinjunction and the new secret route set up to bring those affected to the UK.