The government is unable to calculate the total cost of a secret relocation plan it set up following the Afghan data leak, Britain's public spending watchdog has said.
In Ministry of Defence (MoD) accounts, the amount spent on the scheme was not recorded separately to other resettlement activity following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2021, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.
A catastrophic MoD data breach, which was discovered in August 2023, exposed the details of some 18,700 applicants to the UK’s Afghan resettlement schemes, along with thousands of their family members.
In reaction to the data breach discovery, the MoD imposed an unprecedented superinjunction on the UK press and began to evacuate thousands of Afghans affected by the leak.
The government used an already established route to the UK, set up under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Programme (Arap), as “cover” for the evacuation of those affected by the breach.
The Arap scheme was set up in 2021 for Afghans who supported and worked alongside British forces, and some Afghans had their eligibility for this scheme reassessed in light of the data breach.
Others who did not qualify under Arap because they did not have strong enough ties to the UK, but who were also affected by the breach, were brought to Britain under a new Afghanistan Response Route (ARR).
This part of the clandestine operation was estimated by the MoD to cost £850m.
In a report published on Wednesday, the NAO said the government had failed to provide enough evidence to give the watchdog "confidence" in the accuracy of this figure.
The report said that, as of July 2025, 23,463 people affected by the data breach have already been brought to the UK or will be evacuated.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, chair of the committee of public accounts, said: “After the High Court superinjuncton was lifted earlier this year, confusion still remains over the reported £850m historic and future costs relating to the breach, with the MoD unable to provide sufficient assurance over their numbers. This figure does not include all legal costs or compensation claims, which currently remain unknown”.
The watchdog said: "The MoD is not able to determine exactly what it has spent on resettling people through the ARR scheme.
"This is because it did not separately identify the costs of the ARR scheme in its accounting system, meaning that these costs were not visible in its management accounts, but instead included them within its total spending on Afghan resettlement activities."
The MoD said it had avoided differentiating the costs in order to comply with an unprecedented superinjunction that was granted following the leak amid fears the Taliban could target would-be refugees for reprisals.
Although it does not know exactly how much it has spent on the scheme, it estimates it has spent around £400m on relocating people through ARR so far, and will spend a further £450m.
At its most generous before the superinjunction was lifted, the government was prepared to evacuate more than 42,000 people affected by the data leak.
In October 2024, senior ministers approved a plan to create a secret Afghan Resettlement Programme (ARP) that would aim to evacuate around 36,000 people, 28,500 of whom had been affected by the data leak.
The total costs of this new scheme were estimated by the MoD to be between £6.27bn and £7.23bn. These costs were then repeated by senior government officials in court.
Following the decision to lift the superinjunction, the MoD took the decision to reduce the scope of the resettlement scheme. They said in July that the costs of just the ARR scheme would total £850m when complete, and that the total cost of all Afghan resettlement schemes under the ARP would be £5.5-6bn.
According to the NAO report published on Wednesday, the MoD told the watchdog that the total cost of all Afghan resettlement activity between 2021 and 2029 is forecast to be £2.074bn.
Referring to the ARR costs, the watchdog said that the MoD “had not provided sufficient evidence to give the NAO confidence regarding the completeness and accuracy of its estimates”.
The costs to the whole of government are expected to be around £128,000 per resettled individual, of which an estimated £53,000 would be met by the MoD.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We are committed to honouring the moral obligation we owe to those Afghans who stood with us and risked their lives.
"Since taking the decision to support the lifting of the super injunction brought by the previous government, we have been clear on the costs associated with relocating eligible Afghans to the UK - and are fully committed to transparency.
“The cost of all Afghan resettlement schemes, including the Afghan Response Route, has been fully funded as part of the government’s Spending Review.”
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