Furious members of the parliamentary committee which deals with national security have written to ministers demanding to know why they were kept in the dark for two years over the Afghan data breach.
The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has a statutory duty to oversee and scrutinise intelligence matters but was not informed of the data breach, which affected up to 100,000 Afghans and cost the UK taxpayer billions, until a superinjunction was lifted on Tuesday.
Ministers have also been ordered to release sensitive papers to the ISC on the leak and the reasons for seeking to keep it secret for so long.
The breach happened when an unnamed official, who was not sacked, sent an email with a datasheet of what they thought were 150 names to help get them evacuated as the Taliban swept to power. But instead, the data contained details of thousands of Afghans who were then left exposed.
In a terse letter to ministers, the chairman of the committee, Lord Beamish, has warned that there were “no grounds” to withhold the information from them.
He told The Independent that the government legally has no choice now but to hand over the sensitive documents.
He said: “We are not like a normal parliamentary select committee, we are a statutory committee so the government has to provide us with what we have asked for.”
The Labour peer went on: “We were unable to ask for the documents before because we did not know about them. But it will be interesting to find out why they were withheld from us given that one of the judges suggested they shared them with the ISC.”
He suggested that once committee members have the chance to review the papers, they may hold an inquiry and call ministers, former ministers and government officials in for questioning.
Commenting on the decision to withhold the information from the committee, Lord Beamish, who has served on it for a number of years, said: “This has never happened before in my experience. There was no grounds for it.
“I heard [former defence secretary] Ben Wallace suggest it was because it was defence-related and we deal with the intelligence services but that is complete nonsense. We have a clear role in defence intelligence as well. The idea as well that there was a concern about sharing official secrets with the committee is nonsense as well.”
He described the cover-up and avoidance of scrutiny as “appalling” and “something completely new” in his experience.
The committee’s members all sign the Official Secrets Act and notoriously operate behind closed doors, not revealing the sensitive issues it has discussed, as a means of ensuring that the intelligence and security services are held to account.
In a statement issued after the ISC met on Thursday morning, the Labour peer Lord Beamish said: “The committee has today written to require, under the statutory powers the committee has in the Justice and Security Act 2013, that Defence Intelligence (DI) and Joint Intelligence Organisation assessments be provided to it immediately, together with any other intelligence assessments as referred to by Mr Justice Chamberlain in his judgement of 15 July, the closed version of the Review by Paul Rimmer, and all other DI material relating to the ARAP scheme.”
He added: “The committee has also asked to be provided with the basis on which government counsel advised the Court of Appeal that material relating to the data loss could not be shared with this committee, given that under the Justice and Security Act 2013 classification or sensitivity of material is not grounds on which information can be withheld from the ISC.”
Former Tory defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace has taken full responsibility for the breach and the decision to initially get an injunction to prevent publication of the details.
Armed forces minister James Heappey has apologised, describing the breach as “gut-wrenching”. But former defence secretary Sir Grant Shapps and former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who oversaw the cover-up, are yet to make a public statement.
Labour defence secretary John Healey decided to lift the superinjunction preventing publication and even discussion about the data breach on Tuesday, after a government-ordered review found the risk to those affected of Taliban reprisals was longer than previously thought.
Senior ministers have told The Independent about their “total shock” when they were presented with the facts of the breach and the super injunction on their first day in office last year.
The Independent has asked the MoD for comment.
