Why Afghan data breach cover-up is a genuine scandal
Bad decisions and mistakes by governments should result, not in cover-ups, but in those responsible being held to account
The scandal that landed last week over the cover-up of a massive data breach of not only tens of thousands of potential Afghan refugees but also British intelligence agents and special forces personnel will run deeper and longer than the headlines and outrage it generated.
We have come to expect significant data breaches, be they through incompetence and error of administrators, the criminal exploits of organised crime or political agents of foreign powers intent on bringing down our democratic freedoms. What continues to shock many people, however, is when the politicians and officials we expect to look after our interests go to extraordinary lengths to cover-up their failures, be they innocent or guilty of the original misjudgment.
Our political class appears to find no difficulty in being prepared to sign-off not just millions or even hundreds of millions – but billions of pounds to make problems we were not even aware of appear to go away.
Democratic scrutiny denied
As if that is not a scandalous enough breach of public trust, some politicians then travel down the road of using legal processes such as super-injunctions to prevent public knowledge of their department’s administrative failure to protect them from political embarrassment. The use of a super-injunction means the reporting of the actual injunction itself is not possible – so only a limited few are aware of the scandal and the legal cover-up that has taken place.
It means the ordinary democratic processes of public scrutiny and accountability are automatically denied and the democratic order of making elected representatives responsible for their judgments and actions is bypassed.
One might think the natural order of actions having consequences in a democracy would be restored when there is a change of government but, as is so often the case, the poor decisions of previous governments are very often picked up by new administrations who see there is advantage in continuing with the same approach as they too might suffer some blow-back and might want to avail themselves of the same secret protections.
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Veterans at risk
To sum up, when the real life-threatening failure for many of sending personal data to the wrong person was discovered, a conspiracy between ruling politicians, government officials and then opposition politicians who became the new rulers resulted in several billions being committed to accepting 25,000-30,000 refugee applicants into our country.
The possibility that some of those might actually not be who they appeared to be, but have criminal histories and intentions or be agents of terrorist groups cannot be discounted. Meanwhile the new government, aided by many activist lawyers working through lawfare, take it upon themselves to instigate processes that put our veterans at risk of prosecution and spend a great deal less on veterans’ welfare such as housing.
Unsurprisingly, these revelations have led to recriminations about the role of some previously respected politicians who were thought to be on the side of veterans and seen as hawks in the pursuit of protecting our all-too-porous borders. Politicians such as the former Secretaries of State for Defence, Ben Wallace and Grant Shapps, have been forced to justify their actions at the time.
Of course, when a scandal breaks under the pressures of competitive politics, naïve confusion and wilful misrepresentation abounds. Some politicians who were not in office at the time and had no responsibility for a particular error – such as the application for a super-injunction or the establishment of potentially costly refugee schemes that could be open to abuse – are smeared by the accusations and recriminations.
Super-injunction may have backfired
Establishing a timeline of when decisions were taken, whom they were taken by and what the consequences were becomes crucial in determining if the policies pursued were justifiable.
In the case of the mistaken release of data, there is now good reason to believe the pursuit of the super-injunction – while thought at the time to be necessary to protect lives – only served to elevate the importance of the data and make it more valuable to the Taliban.
Sadly this type of misjudgment without consequences is all too prevalent in British establishment circles. We should recall how in June 2021, Angus Lapsley, a British official, left behind classified Ministry of Defence documents at a bus stop in Kent. They were found by a member of the public, dripping wet from the rain and handed in to the BBC.
The papers included PowerPoint presentations and e-mails that revealed sensitive military recommendations regarding the UK's military presence in Afghanistan; details about the British military's response to Russia's reaction to HMS Defender’s passage through disputed Ukrainian waters; further plans for a possible UK military presence in Afghanistan; details of service numbers around Kabul and arms export campaigns.
Lapsley was not dismissed or prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act but had his security clearance suspended and was redeployed to the Foreign Office. Yet this year he was appointed Britain’s permanent representative to Nato. In contrast, another senior civil servant, Richard Jackson, was fined £2,500 under the Act for leaving sensitive papers about al-Qaeda on a train in 2008.
Politicians must trust public
Cover-ups and sometimes consequence-free misjudgments appear all too easy in our parliaments. If our political discourse and decision-making – including whom we choose to elect – is to improve, then we need to be better informed. Treating the public as children rather than adults only ever results in child-like behaviours and outcomes.
For our people to make considered choices and be able to trust our politicians requires far more trust in the public from the politicians themselves.
When Prime Ministers make promises before general elections, they should be expected to do everything in their power to deliver them – or learn not to make pledges they cannot keep. When politicians fail, they should be ready to accept responsibility, and only those that do should be given the opportunity for redemption – rather than shielding those who have hidden the truth from us for years and even decades.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments
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