I suppose we might have guessed something like this. In August 2021, the then foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, had moaned about the “sea being closed” while on holiday in Crete. The fate of thousands of Afghans who had helped the UK and whose lives were in danger as the Taliban homed in on Kabul came a distant second. For Psycho Dom, it was a simple matter of priorities.
So no wonder a government official and/or a soldier had been less than diligent with the names of Afghans at risk. Following by example. Which one of us hasn’t accidentally emailed an entire spreadsheet of more than 18,000 endangered people to someone who might pass on their names to the Taliban? Such an easy mistake to make. Why bother to check a confidential file when you can just press send and go and grab yourself a coffee?
Shortly after 12.30 and the lifting of the superinjunction, the defence secretary, John Healey, came to the Commons to give a statement on the data leak, the subsequent cover-up, and the news that a secret relocation scheme costing at least £800m, the Afghan Recovery Route (ARR), was being wound up. He might as well have been talking about the, by now familiar, Arse Covering Scheme (ACS).
Time and again, Healey would commend MPs from both sides of the house for the tone they were taking. The sombre, measured sentences. No surprise there. The fuck ups all originated and were set in motion under the Tories. So they were hardly going to complain. But the self-congratulatory non-mea culpas all became nauseatingly cloying.
This was not a time to not rock the boat. This was a time for righteous anger. How dare our government – not the government – be so cavalier with data? Put allies at risk. And then try to cover up the entire shambles. And get us to pay for it. Thanks for that. At the very moment Rishi Sunak was shouting “Stop the Boats”, he was running his own private relocation and immigration scheme to mop after his government’s own failings. Someone should hang their head in shame at the hypocrisy.
Time and again Healey would insist that it caused governments great pain to keep things secret from the public. That would have come as news to most of us. More frequently, it feels like getting blood from a stone. A desperate attempt either to conceal or, when that’s no longer an option, to spin the truth to their best advantage.
Tuesday’s statement felt like no exception. There was no avoiding this one for Healey once the superinjunction was lifted. If he hadn’t given a statement he would soon have been playing catchup, as the journalists who had known about the story for years but had been prevented from writing about it would have got to work. Best to get the government version out first. Time for the ACS.
Healey began by apologising for having kept parliament in the dark about the data leak and the ARR. This broke his heart, he said. He sounded almost sincere. But what could he have done? He too was bound by the superinjunction. What we had to remember was that it was all in a good cause. So top secret, that even those whose data had been breached were not allowed to be informed. That way, if the Taliban had wanted to send in a death squad then at least it would come as a surprise. So much better than spending months worrying about it. Or trying to flee the country.
Anyway, Healey concluded, everything was fine now. The Taliban had promised to be a lot nicer. So it was OK for the superinjunction to be lifted and it was just fine to end the ARR. Everyone who needed to be in the UK was now accounted for. Or thereabouts. And anyone who wasn’t could just take their chances. The UK had done its bit. Paid all its debts. You couldn’t go around feeling sorry for Afghans you’d let down indefinitely. Part of the healing process was the moving on.
In reply, the shadow defence secretary, James Cartlidge, was keen to absolve both the Tories and Labour. And especially himself. He had been a very – ever so humble – junior minister in August 2023 and his involvement had been minimal. So minimal that he might as well not have been there. So let’s just say he wasn’t there. Or anywhere. It was all down to Ben Wallace or Grant Shapps. One of the two. But they too had been doing their best. So it was probably right for all concerned to just reflect quietly and look to the future.
This pretty set the tone for the next hour and a quarter. Everyone was very sorry but none of them had done anything wrong. And it was important to remember that. They were the real victims in this, not the Afghans. The Lib Dem’s Helen Maguire went on to wonder just how many other superinjunctions the government might have in place. Er … That’s the whole point. We’ll never get to find out unless they are lifted.
For all his rhetoric about the value of transparency in the cradle of democracy – yuk – Healey was relatively opaque with his answers. He ignored requests to identify the leaker as either a government official, a civil servant or a soldier and refused to say if the person had been sacked or forced to resign. Above all of our pay grades.
He also threw his hands in the air. Much of the detail was in the papers of the former government. And luckily he didn’t have access to them. Long may it stay that way.
Some of the dimmer MPs from both parties sought assurance that this could never happen again. A question that always gets asked at such moments. As if you could stop idiots from being idiots. You can’t foolproof the system. Especially when Psycho and the Shappster are setting the mood.
The most interesting contributions came from Tories Edward Leigh and Mark Pritchard. Leigh suggested that one useful takeaway was we should think twice before committing to any more liberal imperialist urges to send British troops into unstable countries. Pritchard reckoned it was time to rock the boat. Shake the Commons out of its complacency and for people to feel a genuine sense of outrage. Healey shook his head. This was the wrong tone. That would never do.