Ben Wallace makes 'no apology' for huge Afghan data breach as he denies 'cover up'

Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said he makes "no apology" for overseeing one of the biggest secrets in recent political history, as he defends the actions he took amid an enormous Afghan data breach. Mr Wallace was Defence Secretary when a military official oversaw an enormous data breach that put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

A dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who had applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) was released "in error" in February 2022 by an unnamed British defence official. Yesterday the Government finally lifted an unprecedented super injunction, allowing the public to be told about the major blunder that forced his Tory predecessors to set up a top-secret scheme to fly those at risk as a result of the leak to the UK. Despite widespread outrage about both the leak and the last government's efforts to conceal it from the public, today Ben Wallace has insisted he makes "no apology" for his actions.

The former Defence Secretary said his "primary concern" was the welfare of those names included in the leak, which the government believed might have been hunted down and killed by the Taliban.

Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Wallace said: "My priority was not the UK government, nor politics, it was the veterans and those who we needed to get out. We did all we could to continue to evacuate even more people who were now at risk and do so through even more routes - air or land."

"After much work by our own people there was, and still to this day is, no evidence that any of the data found its way to the Taliban.

"I make no apology for applying to the court for an injunction at the time. It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover up."

Yesterday the Government said that initial concerns about the safety of those names included in the leak had been misguided, and there is little evidence that the Taliban are taking action against them.

Mr Wallace's denial of a "cover up" has been slammed, however, with Reform UK's Zia Yusuf branding it "the worst cover up in our lifetimes".

Deputy leader Richard Tice fumed: "Tories & Labour lied & covered up the arrival of tens of thousands of people with no checks & no vetting. Sex offenders, terrorists & criminals among them.

"But the Establishment want us to pay billions and stay silent."

Mr Wallace's defiance was also slapped down by Johnny Mercer, who served as veterans minister at the MoD during Mr Wallace's tenure.

Also writing in the Telegraph, Mr Mercer branded the scandal "the most hapless display of incompetence by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government."

"I had no idea why the injunction existed in the first place; the list had appeared on Facebook and everyone, including the media, seemed to know about it. Officials seemed to get a bit of a kick out of something being 'Top Secret'.

"I feel furious, sad and bitter about the whole thing, and do as much as I can to get through each day not thinking about Afghanistan."