LONDON: Britain set up a secret scheme to relocate thousands of Afghans to the UK after people’s personal details were disclosed in a data leak, risking reprisals from the Taliban after their return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, court documents showed on Tuesday.
Concerns that individuals named could be targeted by the Taliban led the previous Conservative government to set up the relocation scheme, involving thousands of people and estimated to cost the government two billion pounds ($2.7 billion).
British defence minister John Healey apologised for the data leak, which included details about members of parliament and senior military officers who supported applications to help soldiers who worked with the British military and their families relocate to the UK from Afghanistan.
“This serious data incident should never have happened,” Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
Defence minister apologises for data leak, which included details about MPs who helped soldiers to resettle in Britain
“It may have occurred three years ago under the previous government, but to all whose data was compromised I offer a sincere apology.”
Healey said that around 4,500 affected people “are in Britain or in transit ... at a cost of around 400 million pounds”. But he added that no-one else from Afghanistan will be offered asylum because of the data leak.
News of the leak comes as Britain’s public finances are tight and the right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK political party leads in the opinion polls.
British forces were first deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 following the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, and they played a major role in combat operations there until 2014.
The government is facing lawsuits from those affected by the breach, further adding to the ultimate cost of the incident.
A Ministry of Defence-commissioned review of the data breach, a summary of which was also published on Tuesday, said more than 16,000 people affected by it had been relocated to the UK as of May this year.
The details emerged on Tuesday after a legal ruling known as a superinjunction was lifted. The injunction had been granted in 2023 after the MoD argued that a public disclosure of the breach could put people at risk of extra-judicial killing or serious violence by the Taliban.
The dataset contained personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had applied to be relocated to Britain and their families. A High Court said in a summary of its ruling to lift the injunction that the data “contained personal information about more than 33,000 applicants”.
It was released in error in early 2022, before the MoD spotted the breach in August 2023, when part of the dataset was published on Facebook. The former Conservative government obtained the injunction the following month.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centre-left government, which was elected last July, launched a review into the injunction, the breach and the relocation scheme, which found that although Afghanistan remains dangerous, there was little evidence of intent by the Taliban to conduct a campaign of retribution.
Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2025
