LONDON:
The British government has revealed that thousands of Afghans who worked alongside UK forces and officials were secretly relocated to Britain after a data breach in 2022 exposed their identities, leaving them vulnerable to Taliban reprisals.
Defence Minister John Healey disclosed the details to parliament on Tuesday after the UK High Court lifted a super-injunction that had prevented any reporting on the operation.
The breach occurred in February 2022 when a UK official accidentally leaked a spreadsheet containing the names and personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to be evacuated to Britain, just six months after the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
“This was a serious departmental error,” Healey said. “Lives may have been at stake.”
To protect those deemed at highest risk, the previous Conservative government launched a covert evacuation programme in April 2024, known as the Afghan Response Route. Under this initiative, around 900 Afghans and 3,600 of their family members have been brought to the UK or are currently in transit. Healey said the scheme has so far cost taxpayers approximately £400 million ($535 million), with another 600 applications approved, pushing the expected total cost to £850 million.
They are among roughly 36,000 Afghans accepted by Britain under various schemes since Kabul fell in August 2021.
Healey, who was briefed on the operation last December while serving as Labour’s opposition defence spokesperson, told parliament he felt “deeply uncomfortable” being unable to inform MPs about the data breach due to a court-imposed super-injunction. The former Conservative government had argued that revealing the leak would increase the risk of the Taliban acquiring the dataset and targeting those listed.
After Labour came to power in July 2024, Healey ordered a review of the secret scheme, which found “very little evidence of intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution” against those named in the breach. The Afghan Response Route has now been closed.
Healey apologised for the leak, saying, “This data breach should never have happened.” He estimated that the overall cost of relocating Afghans to Britain since 2021 now stands between £5.5 billion and £6 billion.
James Cartlidge, the Conservative party’s defence spokesperson, also apologised for the data breach, which took place under the previous government. However, he defended the decision to keep the evacuation effort secret, stating it was necessary to prevent “an error by an official of the British state leading to torture or even murder of persons in the dataset at the hands of what remains a brutal Taliban regime.”
Healey confirmed that all Afghans brought to Britain under the scheme have been included in official immigration statistics. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to reduce overall migrant numbers entering the UK.
This revelation comes amid continuing criticism of Britain’s chaotic Afghanistan evacuation. In 2023, the Ministry of Defence was fined £350,000 by the UK’s data protection watchdog for a separate breach that exposed the personal details of 265 Afghans seeking evacuation during the fall of Kabul. Parliamentary inquiries have previously described the UK’s handling of its Afghan evacuation as marked by “systemic failures of leadership, planning and preparation,” leaving hundreds eligible for relocation stranded and at risk after embassy staff abandoned sensitive documents in Kabul
