Exclusive: Defence secretary John Healey on the "catastrophic" Afghan leak
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In an exclusive interview with The News Agents, Defence Secretary John Healey reveals why he's finally lifted the superinjunction that silenced reporting of a catastrophic data breach affecting 18,000 Afghans who helped UK forces – and why the person responsible still has a job.
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In brief:
- The person responsible for leaking the details of 18,000+ Afghans who worked with British forces, putting them at risk of Taliban reprisal - is still employed by the government, Defence Secretary John Healey tells The News Agents.
- Lewis Goodall was hit with a superinjunction for nearly two years to prevent reporting the story, which has now been lifted.
- The asylum scheme (ARAP) designed to help those affected by the breach is being closed on the same day the story breaks, potentially leaving vulnerable Afghans without protection.
The secret court that silenced the News Agents...until now
What’s the story?
The person who leaked details of thousands of Afghans who had worked with UK armed forces during the Afghanistan war is still employed by the British government, Defence Secretary John Healey has confirmed.
The revelation comes on the day that a superinjunction on The News Agents and other journalists was lifted, after nearly two years.
The dataset leak was of the over 18,000 people who have applied to Britain’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme (ARAP), which was set up in 2021 to help those who assisted with the UK armed forces.
Lewis Goodall tells of how when he discovered there had been a catastrophic data breach in the Ministry of Defence in August 2023, he went to the government department, aware of the huge risk it posed to the thousands of Afghans who could face Taliban reprisal for working with Western forces.
He was slapped with an unprecedented superinjunction - and has been in secret courts for nearly two years in an effort to get it lifted, and expose the story.
Healey refused to say whether anyone had lost their job over this dangerous error.
The person who sent the spreadsheet with the data on it in error is “no longer doing the same job on the Afghan brief, but they're still employed by the British government,” Healey confirms to Lewis on The News Agents.
The leak happened during the previous Conservative government, but when Healey took over as Defence Secretary in July 2024, he upheld the order.
While Healey called the story “shocking” he stops short of labelling it a national scandal, and says he doesn’t back a public enquiry into what happened.
But he does say that accountability begins today, starting with the superinjunction being lifted.
“When you had ministers in the last government alerted to this data breach, they could have chosen accountability, but they chose an injunction,” he tells Lewis.
“Today, we're able to start that process of looking into those complexities and then starting to judge whether and in what ways people should be held to account.”
Exclusive: Defence secretary on the "catastrophic" Afghan leak
Why was the superinjunction lifted?
As shadow defence secretary Healey was subject to the same injunction as Lewis, something which he passionately says “offends him” and has been “deeply uncomfortable”.
If he was defence secretary at the time, he says things would have played out differently, as there would have been no superinjunction.
“It's absolutely not what I would have done,”
Earlier this year Healey commissioned an independent report from Paul Rimmer, a former senior civil servant and ex deputy head of Defense Intelligence.
“We have an updated, new assessment of the risk, which the judge today has said is the material evidence that allows him to remove his superinjunction.” Healey says.
He adds that the Rimmer report shows that there is now “little evidence of any systematic campaign of retribution” from the Taliban towards those Afghans who helped the UK armed forces.
“It's on the basis of Rimmer that I've been able to change government policy and announce that to the house.”
Defence Secretary John Healey on why he closed the asylum scheme for Afghans at risk from data breach
What about the Afghans named in the data leak?
But as Healey announced in the Commons that the superinjunction was lifted today, it was also announced that ARAP, the asylum scheme designed to deal with the data breach - and help those Afghans at risk - would close.
Lewis says the timing of this is “odd,” pointing out that some of the people affected by the breach may have only discovered as a result of the news breaking today that they are at risk.
“I sat in court for two years. I was told repeatedly that if the Taliban became aware of this data set, it would represent lethal risk to the people on it and their families, potentially up to 100,000 people,” Lewis recalls.
“That was the entire basis of the super injunction. And if the Taliban didn't know about the data set already - they definitely do now.”
“Why would you be taking away the lifeboats at precisely the moment of maximum danger?”
Healey claims that everybody who had made applications under ARAP was informed before he announced the breach in the Commons. But, he admits that there was incomplete information - with some people's contact details having changed, and some family members not being aware. He directs those people to a government website for further information.
This, Lewis says, is pointless.
“I could log on to it and I find I was affected, but then the scheme that I might need to address that, has closed.”
Healey won’t rule out the MoD ever using a superinjunction again, but says “it is not an instrument that the British state in our society should reach for.”
“It's something that I never want to see again in my time in Parliament or in government.”
Listen to the full interview on The News Agents.
