Grant Shapps today defended hiding the major Afghan data leak and subsequent decision to bring almost 20,000 people to Britain, saying the secrecy prevented Brits from being murdered.
In his first interview since the a super injunction was raised the former defence secretary said he would do it again, amid a major row over the unprecedented two-year cover-up.
Speaking to the BBC he justified the decision to withhold details of the major security breach from the public, saying he would rather explain the secrecy than why ‘people were murdered’ on his watch.
Special forces, MI6 spies and government officials were among more than 100 Britons on the lost Afghan dataset, it is understood.
‘It seemed to me that if there was any doubt at all, that erring on the side of extreme caution, a super injunction meant that that was entirely justified,’ Mr Shapps told Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘And I’ll tell you what, anybody sat behind the desk that I was sat in as defence secretary and faced with the choice of whether that list would get out and people would be pursued, murdered and executed as a result of it, or doing something to try and save those lives, I’d much rather now be in this interview explaining why a super injunction was required, than being in this interview explaining why I failed to act and people were murdered.’
But he also questioned why Labour did not get the super injunction lifted sooner, adding: ‘I don’t think it should have carried on as long as it had.’
However a Whitehall source said: ‘Shapps is trying to rewrite history. Everyone knows he was the one personally demanding to keep the super injunction in place after the election was called last summer.
‘He was defence secretary when the secret route was designed, agreed, established and expanded under the last Tory government.’
The Daily Mail has seen the list and can now reveal that details of scores of UK operatives were among the 18,800 Afghans on the list that sparked a major security crisis.
Ministers fought for two years to hush-up the data blunder with an unprecedented super-injunction that silenced the Mail and other media.
The High Court was told the draconian gagging order was necessary to protect 100,000 Afghans the UK had put ‘at risk of death’.
But after we were able to get access to the database and analyse it, it became clear that dozens of senior British military officers including a brigadier and government officials were also exposed.
The Mail’s investigation triggered a massive secrecy row yesterday as security-cleared parliamentarians erupted in fury at being kept in the dark.
Asked whether he backed calls from the Intelligence and Security Committee for the report to be released, Mr Shapps said: ‘Yes I would.
‘And secondly, this injunction, the superinjunction, was in place for longer than I was defence secretary, right?
‘So it’s been in place a lot longer under the current Government than it was under us, and I’m surprised it’s lasted quite so long.
‘My expectation was, as the risks start to lessen over time and people are removed from the theatre, from Afghanistan, and measures are taken to protect the Brits on the list… I’d thought that it was probably going to come to an end last summer, the autumn perhaps at maximum.’
He insisted he would ‘do the same thing all over again’ to protect Afghans and Brits involved and said he thinks ‘the public understands that there are times where you simply have to act in the most maximalist way in order to stop people from being murdered and executed, and that is, quite simply, what properly happened in this case.’
He added: ‘Now, as I said, I don’t think it should have carried on as long as it had… those questions are for others.’
