A former senior military source said the MoD’s decision to scrap controls on emails to non-MoD staff, along with a reduced understanding of IT, paved the way for a defence official to mistakenly leak a list containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 Afghans, putting lives at risk.
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Defence and security insiders spoke to The i Paper and described a culture at the MoD where essential safeguards mitigating against this type of leak were stripped away, IT literacy and security awareness has declined and bitter infighting between departments has undermined an effort to patch up mistakes.
One former senior MoD official said there was “a lot of argument internally” over who “should and shouldn’t be coming back” to the UK.
Afghans arrive in the UK after being airlifted out of an unnamed third country by the RAF via the ARAP scheme (Photo: PA)
In February 2022, a defence official working at the Special Forces headquarters accidently leaked the list of Afghans who had applied to move to Britain. It was sent externally to a number of Afghans living in the UK.
One of the reasons for the leak may be that over the past decade, the level of training and emphasis on staff’s knowledge of IT systems within the MoD has steadily eroded, the former senior MoD official said.
Crucially, safeguards designed to mitigate exactly this kind of breach were removed just years before, in 2018, the source said.
The measure was intended to protect sensitive information from accidental leaks, but it was abandoned after staff reportedly complained it was “inconvenient”. The source added that now there are “zero” safeguards in place.
Defence secretary John Healey said he was “deeply concerned” about the lack of transparency about the leak of Afghans’ data by the MoD. (Photo: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA)
A separate UK intelligence source focusing on cyber security said the effect of the data breach has been profound.
They added that the revelation about the lack of protections over sensitive data is likely to “raise further questions” about the potential for further leaks within the MoD.
In December 2023, the UK Information Commissioner fined the MoD £350,000, describing the breach as “egregious” and warning it could have been life-threatening.
A turf war between agencies
The most recent data fiasco sparked a scramble to resettle Afghan nationals.
Although this led to internal arguments, the former MoD source, who was senior in the department at the time of the leak, said: “There was a level of diligence that was taking place to make sure we just weren’t accepting every application on a whim.”
British Marines run towards a Taliban position in Afghanistan during a British commando offensive in 2007 (Photo: John Moore/Getty)
Hurried vetting process
Defence Secretary John Healey said that Afghans arriving in the UK through the Afghanistan Response Route, set up after the data leak, “undergo strict national security checks before being able to enter our country”.
“Or at least at one point it did.”
“Could you even do them properly? Particularly given the chaotic manner in which the withdrawal was carried out.”
For the thousands of Afghans whose identities were exposed – many of whom trusted Britain enough to fight alongside its forces – the consequences of the data breach remain unclear.
A MoD spokesperson said: “This Government has taken major steps to tighten protocols and ensure accountability across Government.
“We have introduced new secure software, upgraded the data training offer, and appointed a new Chief Information to lead efforts to straighten data protection across the department.”
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