Many questions arise from the astonishing story of the Afghan data leak, but one is why the government seems to have no idea how much it will cost, says Eliot Wilson
The announcement last week by defence secretary John Healey that the government had for two years had a super-injunction to conceal a massive loss of classified data was a tough story to unpack.
It started with a soldier or Ministry of Defence civil servant accidentally leaking a spreadsheet of names and details of nearly 20,000 Afghan nationals who had assisted UK forces during our deployment, as well as their dependents, and wanted to move to Britain. The MoD was unaware of this security breach for 18 months, and when it was discovered, the then-defence secretary Ben Wallace applied to the High Court for a four-month injunction to allow the situation to be rectified. Mr Justice Knowles went a step further, and issued a super-injunction, which has only just been lifted.
Many issues have fallen out of Healey’s statement, and there is a great deal of confusion on a number of points. One is how much the whole episode has cost and will cost, and here claims have varied wildly. Healey told the Commons that Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), set up to deal with the crisis, had so far cost £400m but said when interviewed the following day that the final bill will be around £800-850m.
According to The Times, however, last October the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, approved a plan drawn up by the previous government which foresaw spending £7bn over five years to relocate 25,000 Afghans. The ministry of defence contends that this figure applies to the overall cost of all the relocation schemes.
None of this is small-scale expenditure, but there is clearly a huge difference between something which costs £800m and something which runs to ten times that amount. The MoD is being characteristically secretive, and will not give costings for around 1,000 Afghans who were relocated purely because of the data breach, or a timeframe for the ARR. Of course it is impossible to anticipate future costs to the last sou, but this kind of disparity suggests a much deeper level of confusion and contradiction.
Scrutiny
It is hardly destroying anyone’s cherished illusions to say that governments will manipulate figures to achieve as large or small a sum as suits their political need. The current crisis, however, needs some kind of verification or adjudication, some solid and transparent numbers that can be accepted by everyone.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, has said that MoD civil servants will be called in front of his committee in the autumn to answer questions about costs. The National Audit Office has already criticised the government for not informing it about the leak.
“The MoD did not disclose this matter to the NAO in the established way for sensitive defence matters. The audit director for the MoD audit was briefed on a limited aspect (the fact of a data breach) and was not permitted to share that information within the NAO.”
An agreement had been reached for a very narrow “narrative” reference to the leak to be included in the MoD’s Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24, published last July. In the end, even this was omitted.
The NAO crunches numbers in a way that does not always attract headlines, but it is a hugely valuable resource for independent scrutiny of government. Working hand-in-hand with the Public Accounts Committee, it will hopefully bring some clarity to the financial dimension of this episode. In an era of all-but-vanished public trust in politicians, we desperately need some agreed facts injected into this debate.
I think there’s an even deeper issue, though. We are numb to grotesque overspending by government: HS2, NHS digitalisation, almost any defence procurement project. The Scottish Parliament building went from £40m to £414m in 10 years. If this pattern afflicted a private company, heaven and earth would be moved to diagnose and solve the problem. As voters, we shrug. Of course the cost of a government project has spiralled: we expect it as we expect night to follow day.
The Afghan data breach will be a case study for Sir Keir Starmer’s government. Can it get a grip on accurate costs and prevent runaway spending? And can it be honest with Parliament and the people about it? If not, then it really does have no future.
Eliot Wilson is a writer and contributing editor at Defence on the Brink
