Former Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has issued his first comments on the Afghanistan data leak and super-injunction, insisting he would “do the same thing all over again”. Mr Shapps entered the Ministry of Defence in August 2023, months after the initial leak in February 2022 and shortly after his predecessor Ben Wallace applied for a court order to block journalists revealing details of the scandal.
He said he was appalled to learn about the situation, and his immediate focus had been “sorting out the mess” and putting in place new systems to ensure future leaks were avoided. The former top Tory insisted: “Saving lives had to be top of whatever I was doing in whatever way was required to save those lives.” He issued a full-throated defence of the super-injunction, insisting: “I would do the same thing all over again. I would walk over hot coals to protect those lives.
“There are just things that the state has to do secretly. Otherwise, you get to the point where people are saying, ‘why aren’t you releasing the nuclear codes?’ You simply can’t release everything, and this was one of those times.
“The judge himself decided it should be a super injunction. It had been applied for by my predecessor quite rightly in my view, it came into place just as I came into office. The judge decided it should be a super injunction, and it is the case that once the super-injunction was in place, I thought it should remain.”
Mr Shapps did express surprise that the ban on revealing details of the leak had remained in place for so long, however.
The former defence secretary pointed out that the injunction was in place for longer under the current Labour government than it had been under the Tories, and he had expected it to be lifted last summer.
He said: “I’m surprised it’s lasted quite so long. My expectation was that as the risks start to lessen over time, and people are removed from Afghanistan, and measures are taken to protect the Brits on the list, it would carry on quite so long. I thought it was prob going to come to an end last summer… so I was surprised it’s taken quite so long.”
However he argued he would rather be conducting the interview being asked questions about a super-injunction than being asked why he had failed to act and let Brits and Afghans be murdered.
A YouGov poll earlier this week suggested that half of Britons believe it was right for the previous government to keep the public in the dark over the data leak.
49% said the Government was right to ensure secrecy, compared to just 20% who believe the cover-up was wrong.
Last night it was revealed that as well as 18,000 Afghan names being leaked, more than 100 Britons including spies and special forces were also included in the breach.
In a statement on Tuesday, after an unprecedented superinjunction was lifted by a High Court judge, Defence Secretary John Healey offered a “sincere apology” on behalf of the British Government for the data breach.
He later told the Commons the spreadsheet contained “names and contact details of applicants and, in some instances, information relating to applicants’ family members, and in a small number of cases the names of members of Parliament, senior military officers and Government officials were noted as supporting the application”.
“This was a serious departmental error,” he added.
Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge also apologised on behalf of the former Conservative government, which was in power when the leak happened and when it was discovered more than a year later.