Daily Mail readers have always recognised the bravery and dedication of our outstanding Armed Forces, who serve around the world to keep our nation safe.
Ten years on from the end of combat operations by British troops in Afghanistan, I know that Mail readers also recognise the bravery shown by those thousands of Afghans who fought and served alongside our UK forces in the war against terror.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021, the UK made a commitment. A commitment that we would repay the moral duty we owed those who fought alongside us.
We backed the previous Conservative government in their attempt to do right by those who stood with us and resettle them in the UK. And I never held back when they failed to meet their obligations.
In Opposition, I could see the management of the government’s Afghan resettlement programmes was bad. But it was only when I was called to a meeting with the then-Armed Forces Minister did I find out just how bad things really were. I was issued with a super-injunction, informed about a major data loss and then briefed on a new secret Afghan resettlement scheme. From that moment, this has always weighed heavily on me.
The British Government was bringing people to the UK without the public or parliament knowing, and journalists were barred from reporting anything.
Like the Mail, I value maximum possible transparency from government, which is why this week I made public this resettlement route, set up in secret under the previous government. We have also closed the scheme after we decided that the measures we inherited are no longer proportionate.
It began with a Ministry of Defence (MoD) data loss in February 2022 involving a spreadsheet with personal information from 18,700 Afghans who applied to be resettled in the UK. However, previous Government Ministers did not discover the breach until 18 months later, when details from the spreadsheet appeared online.
The defence secretary at the time applied to the UK courts for an injunction to stop the data breach becoming public. The previous government then established a secret resettlement route to the United Kingdom for Afghans who were considered ‘at highest risk’ due to the breach.
This was all done behind closed doors and two-and-a-half years since the data loss. After entering government as Defence Secretary – and looking very carefully at the full facts – I decided that this unprecedented inheritance needed to be reviewed. So, I commissioned an experienced former intelligence chief – Paul Rimmer – to review the threat to those in Afghanistan.
The Rimmer Review found that while Afghanistan remains a dangerous place, there is little evidence of systematic killings by the Taliban or retribution campaigns. It found they already hold plentiful data on Afghans. And it found that given nearly four years had passed since the fall of Kabul, it is unlikely that those affected by the data loss are at an increased risk purely as a result of being on the dataset.
I now judge the policy to be unsustainable for the taxpayer, unfair for parliament and disproportionate to the threat. For these reasons, I have closed down the scheme, supported the lifting of the super-injunction and brought the full truth into the open.
I want to reassure the British public that all Afghans – regardless of the route by which they arrived in the UK – undergo strict national security checks before being able to enter our country. The British people have welcomed them as they rebuild their lives and contribute to our great country in their new home.
Two weeks before the super-injunction was imposed, the Daily Mail approached the former defence secretary with the details about the data breach. This newspaper could have run the story before anyone else but instead worked with the MoD in good faith, believing that if those names fell into the wrong hands, innocent people could have been captured, tortured or even killed. This was an act of responsible journalism. And I sincerely thank everyone at the Daily Mail for their co-operation and professionalism.
These revelations will have left many people shocked, just as they shocked me. No government would ever wish to act in this way. Our nation is built on a free Press and a transparent government. Today, I am grateful to have brought this difficult chapter to a close and the truth to light.
