Secret gagging order should not have been used to cover up Afghan data breach, says former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace
Sir Ben Wallace has said he would not support using a secret interrogation order to cover up a devastating Afghan data breach that potentially put thousands of Afghans assisting UK forces at risk from the Taliban.
The former defense secretary told MPs on Tuesday that he had ordered a time-limited measure to be used to safeguard news of data leaks while the Ministry of Defense (MoD) tried to understand what went wrong.
But Sir Ben said he had been clear from the start that the government should not completely cover up the breach, which occurred after an official emailed a spreadsheet containing contact details from outside the Ministry of Defence.
The leak, which emerged in August 2023 and led to thousands of Afghans being secretly moved to the UK, was only made public in July when a High Court judge lifted an unprecedented gag order, known as an injunction.
Then came Independent and other media organizations successfully fought to lift the ban 22 months after it was first implemented.
Sir Ben said he told officials: “We are not covering up our mistakes. Our priority is to protect people in Afghanistan and then make it public. We need to say some of them are out of danger.”
Speaking about the indefinite measure, Sir Ben said: “I didn’t think it was the right thing to do. I didn’t think it was necessary.” He told MPs that the injunction should only be in place for as long as the Defense Department needs to determine the number of people whose data was breached.
Asked if he would use injunctive relief, he added: “I said, ‘We’re not doing that. The only thing we can do is go public until we get to the bottom of the threat these people face. I said we won’t cover up our mistakes, we’ll speak out.’
The injunction is so strict that it is forbidden to even mention its existence.
He added: “I think you can get an injunction without reporting the content… An injunction, as far as I understand it, you can’t even call it a precaution. I would never be in that area. Public institutions are responsible. If necessary, you can call the journalist and say please stay away, people are at risk. Most journalists do not want to put people at risk.”
The Ministry of Defense applied to the High Court for an injunction on the day Sir Ben left government, and a judge proactively granted them an injunction.
Grant Shapps later became defense minister and maintained the gridlock order until the 2024 general election, when Labor came to power.
Speaking about the moment of the breach in 2022, Sir Ben said it happened “because someone wasn’t doing their job”. He said he had introduced new control procedures at the Ministry of Defense after another Afghan data breach, but “in this case that clearly didn’t happen, someone clearly wasn’t doing their job.”
He added that the public was being kept in the dark about the overall threat to the UK from bad actors in order to justify low spending on defence. Sir Ben told MPs: “It’s all confidential and if it’s completely confidential there will be no competing public pressure on the exchequer over the money.”
He said defense is lower on voters’ list of priorities, but that’s partly because they don’t know the threat they face.
