It was “fundamentally objectionable” that Government decisions about thousands of lives and billions of pounds were made without scrutiny from Parliament or the public, a judge said in a later overturned decision to lift a superinjunction.
A dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) was released “in error” in February 2022.
Between 80,000 and 100,000 people, including family members of the Arap applicants were affected by the breach and could be at risk of harassment, torture or death if the Taliban obtained their data, judges said in June 2024.
However an independent review, commissioned by the Government in January 2025, concluded last month that the data loss was “unlikely to profoundly change the existing risk profile of individuals named”.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) became aware of the breach in August 2023, after details were published on a Facebook group.
The Government sought a court order to prevent details of the breach being published and were granted a superinjunction, which also stopped the fact an injunction had been made from being reported.
Mr Justice Chamberlain, the judge who oversaw most of the proceedings, gave three rulings behind closed doors – the last of which would have lifted the order after 21 days, but was overturned by the Court of Appeal.
In his first decision in November 2023, the judge said that granting the superinjunction to the Government “is likely to give rise to understandable suspicion that the court’s processes are being used for the purposes of censorship,” adding: “This is corrosive of the public’s trust in Government.”
Mr Justice Chamberlain said usually the Government would face “the ordinary mechanisms of accountability which operate in a democracy”, from the press, MPs, peers and parliamentary committees.
“The grant of a superinjunction has the effect of completely shutting down these mechanisms of accountability, at least while the injunction is in force,” he said, adding: “It is axiomatic in our system that decisions subject to public and parliamentary scrutiny are not only more legitimate, but are also likely to be better than ones taken in secret.”
In early 2024, the High Court judge continued the superinjunction, finding there was a “real possibility that it is serving to protect” some of those identified on the dataset.
However, he noted that the Government was offering help “to only a very small proportion of those whose lives have been endangered by the data incident”, and that the decisions were being made “without any opportunity for scrutiny through the media or in Parliament”.
The judge ruled in May that the superinjunction should be lifted, finding there was a “significant possibility that the Taliban already know of the existence of the dataset”.
He also found in the – later overturned – decision that if the Taliban had access to the data, the secrecy could be depriving people who would not be relocated by the Government the chance to protect themselves.
Mr Justice Chamberlain said: “The one thing that can be said with confidence is that affected persons would be better off learning of the data breach by notification from the UK Government than from a knock on the door by the Taliban.”
The judge also said that there were “enormous sums” of public money involved in the response.
He ruled: “It is fundamentally objectionable for decisions that affect the lives and safety of thousands of human beings, and involve the commitment of billions of pounds of public money, to be taken in circumstances where they are completely insulated from public debate”.
