Two Parliamentary inquiries were launched yesterday into the Government’s secret immigration scheme for Afghans that it deemed ‘at risk of death’.
The defence select committee will scrutinise how the data breach happened and why it was kept under wraps for so long, after ministers used an unprecedented super-injunction to gag the Press.
Meanwhile the powerful commons’ public accounts committee is set to grill defence chiefs over the ‘confusion’ surrounding the true costs of the scheme and the numbers of Afghans airlifted to Britain.
Defence Secretary John Healey said 6,900 Afghans were being relocated to the UK because of the data beach.
And he said the money spent was £400million so far, with a projected final cost of about £850million.
However, these figures seem starkly at odds with the numbers given to the High Court during the super-injunction case which involved more than 20 secret hearings over two years.
In court, while the gagging order silenced journalists including from the Mail, Mr Justice Chamberlain was told how ministers had agreed on £7billion to extend the scheme over five years and bring in tens of thousands of Afghans.
Last night Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: ‘I am concerned about aspects of the super-injunction and the length of time that it was applied. I’m also concerned about the cost of the scheme.
‘Figures of £800million-plus have been given by the secretary of state, but there still seems to be confusion of where the much higher figure of £7billion, used in the court case, relates to.
‘We at the PAC have already made preliminary arrangements to ask officials from the MoD to come and explain all of this.’
The MoD is now claiming the £7billion figure is in fact £6billion and that it relates to all of its Afghan resettlement schemes, not just the one launched in response to the data disaster.
Last night Tan Dhesi MP, chairman of the defence committee, said there were questions about ‘not only a catastrophic data breach that jeopardised the safety of brave Afghans who served alongside British forces, but also the fact that this breach had been kept secret for years.
‘These shocking events now deserve proper, thorough parliamentary scrutiny.’
He said his committee intended to hold a probe after the summer recess.
At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Keir Starmer tried to deflect blame for the episode, which began in 2023 under the former government, saying it was Tory ministers who had ‘serious questions to answer’.
Former Tory defence secretary Ben Wallace yesterday said he made ‘no apology’ for how the situation was handled, given the potential threat to thousands of Afghans who had helped UK forces.
Sir Ben said reporting of the data leak would have ‘put in peril those we needed to help out’.
