Britain's "Watergate"—The Finer Details of the Afghan/MoD Data Leak Scandal
The super-injunction that suspended one of the world's oldest democracies...
Some are calling it Britain’s Watergate. Others say it’s an exaggeration.
What we do know: our last and current government secretly ushered thousands of foreigners—and still are—into hotels and military bases across the country for the past two years without telling us.
On Tuesday, Labour Defence Secretary John Healey finally lifted the “super-injunction” imposed on a Ministry of Defence (MoD) data leak, saying it was no longer necessary.
The court order not only bans reporting on a story, but bans reporting on the existence of a court order on a story. In other words, it’s a way for the government and courts to erase something from existence.
Journalists, up until Tuesday, faced potential imprisonment if they reported on it—or even acknowledged the existence of the legal proceedings surrounding it.
Coverage of any subsequent developments linked to the leak, including the emergency resettlement schemes, was also prohibited.
The order, imposed in September 2023, followed what has been described as the most serious data breach in British history—an event that led the government to offer asylum to nearly 24,000 Afghans.
To briefly recap: in February 2022, an unnamed Royal Marine made a catastrophic error.
He sent a sensitive data file—not once, but twice—to contacts in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, exposing the names, phone numbers, and addresses of 18,714 Afghan nationals who had applied for asylum in the UK.
These individuals were said to be interpreters, soldiers, and administrators who had worked alongside British forces during the disastrous two-decade-long “military campaign” in Afghanistan.
The government line: we had allies trapped in a hostile country—exposed, and likely to face death if the Taliban got hold of their information. They needed help.
But what followed was less a measured response. It mutated, predictably, into an expansive program of censorship. One aimed at burying what could become the worst national security failure in British history.
A Complicit Judiciary
Now, the government’s successful concealment of the leak—and its far-reaching fallout—would not have been possible without the cooperation of the judiciary, which has faced increasing scrutiny for its overt partisanship of late.
After the then-Conservative-led MoD reportedly learned of the data breach on 14 August 2023—and moved to secure an injunction days later—High Court judge Justice Robin Knowles did something rather curious.
As the Financial Times put it, Knowles “took the exceptional further step of issuing a super-injunction”.
In short, it seems it was the judiciary that was responsible for the unprecedented censorship order—not former Conservative Defence Secretaries Ben Wallace or Sir Grant Shapps (though they didn’t exactly oppose it).
Knowles noted his decision would infringe on freedom of expression and of freedom of the press, but maintained that the restriction was “justified in the particular and exceptional circumstances of this case,” citing risks to life and of torture.
Based on a subjective interpretation of the risks posed by the leak, a single judge subverted the most fundamental tenets of any democracy: freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Even the judge who subsequently took over the case in November 2023, Justice Martin Chamberlain, ruled in favour of maintaining restrictions—twice—before eventually lifting it in May.
At the time, he acknowledged the super-injunction would give rise to the “understandable suspicion that the court’s processes are being used for the purposes of censorship”.
That’s because they were. Although some may argue, at least initially, the government and courts were justified in suppressing the identifying data—if the Taliban had indeed not yet obtained it.
The judiciary’s enabling did not stop there.
Following Chamberlain’s decision to lift the super-injunction in May 2024, the Conservative government—now with Shapps as Defence Secretary—immediately appealed the ruling.
Three Court of Appeal judges—Sir Geoffrey Vos, Lord Justice Singh and Lord Justice Warby—then sided with the government and against the press the next month.
In a written ruling in July, they claimed that between 80,000 and 100,000 people could be at risk if the data fell into enemy hands.
Their logic? A blanket censorship order was necessary while the government secretly spent billions of public cash resettling these compromised Afghan “allies”.
The thing is, there was evidence suggesting that the Taliban already had the dataset from the get-go.
False Premises?
When the MoD was alerted to the breach in August 2023, after being notified of a Facebook post exposing the personal details of nine Afghan asylum applicants from the leak, officials quickly downplayed the severity.
They concluded that “disclosure was very limited” and claimed that hardly anyone had seen it.
In an op-ed for The Telegraph this week, then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace even insisted there was “no evidence that any of the data found its way to the Taliban.”
Except, this doesn’t really hold.
Just days after the MoD contacted Facebook/Meta to have the post removed, an activist assisting Afghan applicants informed the department that Taliban intelligence had made a threatening phone call to one of the applicants—using a number that had only ever been shared in their asylum application.
If true, it suggested the Taliban obtained the data around the same time the anonymous Facebook post went live.
Applicants also reported being contacted on WhatsApp by Iranian numbers, asking them to submit scans of their passports—further evidence that the dataset had been circulated beyond the original leak.
But then more information emerged.
Now that the super-injunction has been lifted, The Telegraph has finally been able to report that Taliban sources claimed to have obtained the spreadsheet in 2022—more than a year before the MoD claimed to have learned of the breach.
Are we really meant to believe The Telegraph knew more than the MoD and our intelligence agencies?
We also now know that the Taliban is reported to have murdered over 200 former Afghan soldiers and police since the leak.
Even current Defence Secretary John Healey admitted on Wednesday that he was “unable to say for sure” whether anyone had been killed as a result of it.
In short, the government may not have been forthcoming with the court, and/or the court failed to appropriately consider the available evidence that suggested the Taliban already possessed the dataset.
It’s an important point because if the Taliban already had the list, then the government and judiciary’s justification for the censorship order collapses. Its only arguable benefit was political preservation.
Some say it would have been far more responsible to inform those affected and facilitate their escape to neighbouring countries.
Instead, the government stonewalled, withheld the truth, kept Parliament in the dark, and continually used the courts to suppress public knowledge.
As former Conservative MP Johnny Mercer—who worked directly on an Afghan task force to re-home genuinely eligible applicants—said this week:
“The list had appeared on Facebook and everyone, including the media, seemed to know about it.”
Uniparty Acting in… Unison
Labour has wasted no time in playing the blame game this week.
The party has published several social media posts accusing the Conservatives of overseeing the breach and orchestrating the cover-up—while taking credit for lifting the super-injunction.
The truth is less straightforward.
Yes, Conservative Defence Secretary Grant Shapps repeatedly renewed the super-injunction, even after Judge Chamberlain challenged its necessity.
He also launched the secret resettlement route with the Home Office in December 2023 (some claim the route wasn’t set up until April 2024 but reports contradict this).
But once Labour took over, they not only kept the same system in place—they expanded it.
Following the July 2024 general election, Labour maintained the secrecy. MoD officials continued arguing to the High Court that any public mention of the breach would risk lives.
Labour reportedly applied to maintain the super-injunction 8 times. In fact, the order remained in place for another whole year.
Then, in October 2024, a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by Pat McFadden—joined by senior Labour figures including Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves, John Healey, Yvette Cooper, and Shabana Mahmood—expanded the Afghan asylum scheme.
The decision came at staggering cost to the taxpayer.
A £7 billion chunk (the estimated cost of the resettlement schemes) quietly ripped into public finances. At the same time, they raised taxes, moaned about “black holes” and kept the gag on journalists and MPs in place.
Bottom line: both parties and governments are culpable.
Systemic Incompetence?
At the heart of this scandal, of course, lies negligence—or outright incompetence—but not in the way one might think.
We know the MoD official who leaked the data was male. But focusing solely on him misses a larger, systemic problem.
In 2023, the Information Commissioner’s Office fined the MoD £350,000 for a separate breach involving 265 ARAP applicants. The cause? “Inadequate procedures and training.”
That breach too involved unsafe email practices—using the “To” field instead of BCC, exposing recipients’ details.
The 2022 leak, then, wasn’t an isolated incident. It followed a pattern.
Crucially, the database that stored asylum applicants’ information should have been housed on a secure system accredited to UK standards. Yet there is still reportedly no clear evidence that it was.
The ICO, which enforces UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, confirmed the MoD’s failures to implement even basic data protection.
By pinning blame on one official, the department has arguably deflected scrutiny from the structural issues.
It wasn’t a one-off blunder. It was seemingly part of a systemic failure in data governance.
Other Players Involved
Given how prolonged the cover-up was, identifying every minister and civil servant involved could fill a dissertation. There are, however, a number of individuals who stand out.
One is Natalie Moore. She is a senior official at the MoD and the civil servant in charge of Afghan resettlement applications.
During a closed court hearing in February 2024, Moore told the judge that a statement would be made to Parliament to “provide cover” for the real reason thousands of Afghans were secretly arriving in Britain.
It was then that the court saw an internal briefing paper, which outlined the government’s plan to “control the narrative” and launch a “robust public comms strategy” that would present “the scale, but not the cause,” of the resettlement.
Shapps was Defence Secretary at the time. The same man responsible for keeping Parliament’s intelligence and security committee and the Commons defence select committee in the dark.
In other words, together, Moore and Shapps planned to put forward an "agreed narrative"—not to inform MPs and the public, but to mislead them.
Sir Lindsay Hoyle is another figure of note.
As early as August 2023, government officials alerted Hoyle—Speaker of the House of Commons—because he held the power to veto written parliamentary questions.
It’s believed the intention was to block MPs from tabling questions that could reveal—or even hint at—the existence of the super-injunction, effectively ensuring the cover-up extended into Parliament.
This wasn’t the only time Hoyle has been involved in the suppression of debate.
In October 2024, following the Southport child-murders, he issued a directive barring MPs from raising the incident in the Commons chamber—even though parliamentary privilege explicitly permits them to do so.
The decision drew sharp criticism from opposition MPs and members of the public, many of whom viewed it as an authoritarian move to limit scrutiny of an issue that struck at the heart of national concern.
Amid the finger-wagging over who knew what and when, two Conservative figures have come to the fore: former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Both have made clear they knew about the super-injunction. Jenrick has since implied that going public might have breached the Official Secrets Act 1989 and landed him with prison sentence. History says otherwise.
One of the core constitutional protections granted to MPs is parliamentary privilege—chief among them, the freedom to speak freely in Parliament. MPs cannot be prosecuted for anything said during proceedings in the House.
If Jenrick or Braverman had raised concerns in the Commons chamber, or through another formal parliamentary route, they would have been shielded from prosecution.
In 1939, a select committee ruled that Conservative MP Duncan Sandys would not have been liable under the Official Secrets Act for disclosing classified information—so long as it was done in Parliament.
The precedent has been reaffirmed multiple times since—by the Committee of Privileges in 1987, and again in 1999 by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which stated unequivocally:
“We recommend no action should be taken to limit freedom of speech in respect of breaches of the Official Secrets Acts in the course of proceedings in Parliament.”
In short: they could have spoken out but they chose not to, which is fair enough if they did so out of genuine fear they would put people in danger. There were British intelligence officials implicated in the dataset after all.
For reference, even super-injunctions don’t override this protection.
In 2011, Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming breached a super-injunction involving a footballer on the floor of the House. He faced no legal or disciplinary sanction.
There are also accusations that the Conservative government silenced a whistleblower who tried to alert the public about mysterious private jets containing scores of foreign nationals landing at a London airport.
In February 2024—just two months after the secret response route was reportedly launched—David Neal, then the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, warned that “high risk” aircraft were landing in Britain without security checks.
He further warned that “gangsters, illegal immigrants, trafficking victims and even extremists could be entering the country without even rudimentary scrutiny.”
The data he received from the Home Office allegedly showed that UK Border Force had failed to check the occupants of hundreds of private jets landing at London City airport over a whole year.
What was the government’s response? Then-Home Secretary James Cleverly sacked him.
A Home Office spokesperson said at the time:
“We have terminated the appointment of David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, after he breached the terms of appointment and lost the confidence of the Home Secretary.”
Was Neal trying to warn us—unknowingly—about flights carrying some of these Afghan “allies”?
Funnily enough, it was also revealed at that point that the Conservative Home Office was sitting on 15 unpublished reports stretching back to April 2023, many to do with immigration.
We also recently got a glimpse of how the civil servants involved in the secret scheme viewed their work.
In an internal memo sent to Home Office staff—obtained by Guido Fawkes—Second Permanent Secretary Simon Ridley thanked colleagues for their "hard work" since the secret breach first came to light.
“Many people in the Home Office have been involved in the response, working discreetly and diligently on this since we were made aware of the incident. I would like to thank them for their dedicated work, under often challenging circumstances. We hope you understand why those working on the response had to do so under such strict conditions.”
The memo went on to offer “support” to any distressed staff.
It was only on Wednesday that current Defence Secretary Healey revealed that, nearly three years on from the leak—not a single official involved has lost their job.
No resignations, no dismissals, no visible accountability—just praise for aiding state secrecy.
Afghan “Allies”?
Four days ago, former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace revealed a chilling detail in The Telegraph.
While overseeing Afghan resettlement programmes, Wallace said he encountered applications from “known Islamic State and al-Qaeda sympathisers” and individuals “dismissed for collaboration with the Taliban”
In other words, extremists have been trying to infiltrate the schemes.
In the chaos that followed the data breach, even junior staff who had stolen from British military bases and sold weapons to the Taliban reportedly made it to the UK—some bringing large numbers of "family" members with them.
At one stage, more than 100,000 Afghans were claiming to have worked with British forces. In reality, the vast majority had no connection at all.
Veteran and former MP Johnny Mercer, who worked on resettlement scheme, stated that the number of badged Afghan allies was closer to 1,000—not tens of thousands.
He said he “couldn’t understand where all these Afghans were coming from”.
We also know that dozens upon dozens of British soldiers were killed by so-called “Allied Afghan forces” in a number of “green-on-blue” attacks in the 2000s.
In one of the worst and most cowardly incidences, a rogue Afghan policeman killed five British soldiers in Helmand in 2009 before fleeing.
But what might be the most alarming development came from Robert Clarke—a veteran with direct involvement in one of the relocation schemes.
According to Clarke, MoD insiders have said that not all individuals secretly resettled in Britain were fully vetted.
The government, now under Labour, insists that all proper vetting was conducted. But just days ago, they were caught purveying in more mistruth.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Defence Secretary John Healey claimed that British intelligence officials were not among those whose identities were leaked.
Two days later, it was found that more than 100 intelligence officials did in fact have their details compromised from the leak.
The current MoD tried to prevent the press from reporting it, even after the super-injunction had been lifted. They claimed the original super-injunction covered that incident. Mercer said the Labour government even applied for a fresh injunction.
Healey has since admitted that some of the Afghan arrivals have “committed some offences and got into trouble.” And we also know that some have been prosecuted for sexual assault.
While the figures vary between reports, approximately 37,200 Afghans have been accepted under the various schemes so far. Another 3,000 are reportedly in transit.
One of those brought under the emergency resettlement scheme has since been reported to have brought as many as 22 “family” members with them. Sources say the average number of relatives brought per applicant is eight.
Defence ministers had apparently hoped to limit these arrivals to spouses and dependent children. But those efforts were derailed by the courts, citing—you guessed it—the European Convention on Human Rights.
The turning point came in November 2024, when High Court judge Justice Yip ruled in a Foreign Office case that “family member” need not imply blood or legal ties. Her judgment stated:
“The term ‘family member’ does not have any fixed meaning in law or in common usage… There may be cultural considerations… there is no requirement for a blood or legal connection.”
So when the government says they’re resettling 24,000 individuals, that figure is thought to exclude all “relatives”. If each Afghan brings a spouse and five children—as is the average in Afghan families—the real number could balloon to 120,000 plus.
Some of those resettled weren’t even in Afghanistan at the time—they were in Pakistan, a country that recently refused to take back its own citizens convicted of grooming in the UK.
In fact, being in Afghanistan wasn’t even a requirement. One could claim to be fleeing the Taliban from virtually anywhere in the world.
And while Afghans have been increasingly presented in a favourable light in certain media circles, the statistics show that some have struggled to integrate into British society—to put it very, very politely.
Figures obtained by the Centre for Migration Control in March found that Afghans are 22 times more likely to be convicted of sexual assault than British nationals.
Additionally, they’re 11 times more likely to be convicted of robbery or drug offences, six times more likely to commit violent crimes or carry a weapon, and four times more likely to commit theft.
Afghans were also the top nationality arriving by small boat in 2024, according to Home Office data, . The overwhelming majority of which were male—87% in 2023.
The cherry on top?
The British taxpayer—who is still footing the costs for this secretive operation—may now be on the hook for yet another bill.
According to reports, around 1,000 Afghans are preparing to sue the British government over the data breach, despite having been quietly resettled and housed in the UK.
So those provided refuge, at the cost of billions, may sue the very government that gave it to them.
Barings, a Manchester-based law firm, has even been urging Afghans via WhatsApp to contact them, providing the web address for a portal where they can complete a compensation claim form.
The firm is reportedly adding 100 claims a day following the lifting of the super-injunction.
But to get back to the crux of the issue: we've got a minister acknowledging hostile actors tried to infiltrate the scheme, government sources alleging that we haven't properly vetted the ones accepted, and data showing Afghans—for one reason or another—are vastly, vastly overrepresented in violence and sexual crimes.
The questions beg: who the hell have we let in? was the safety of the British public, particularly our young girls, weighed against resettling so many migrants?
Cover-Ups… Inside Cover-Ups…
Under the cover of darkness, some of the most disturbing developments in the scandal quietly played out—and they have less to do with the leak than the reaction to it.
By October 2024, only 332 Afghans had arrived under the secretive response route, a programme reserved for so-called top-priority applicants.
But none of them were included in the official immigration figures.
Cabinet Office official Dominic Wilson confirmed in court last month that those arrivals were “not recorded” in the Home Office’s August or November 2024 statistics.
The reason? “Containment,” he said. Publicly, the numbers were still “low.” But privately, the government was working with forecasts of up to 36,000 arrivals.
Put plainly: they manipulated statistics.
Behind the scenes, the MoD also struck a deal with the National Audit Office to water down any mention of the breach in the annual accounts.
The goal? To limit disclosure of what would eventuate into one of the most expensive resettlement programmes in history.
At the same time Labour Chancellor Reeves blamed her predecessors for underfunding public services, she was secretly green-lighting a £7 billion scheme hidden from the official record.
Then came the real dagger to the heart.
After the lifting of the super-injunction, claims emerged that Afghan migrants had been prioritised for housing over Brits who fought for their country. Veterans couldn’t speak out until now.
One of them was George Ford, a former paratrooper who was shot in combat and now suffers from PTSD. He revealed that a Labour-run council near Bracknell failed to provide him with a home.
Meanwhile, some Afghan migrants resettled under government schemes in Bracknell were placed in a four-star hotel, offered free English lessons, and given NHS treatment.
Former British Army major and now councillor Duncan McDonald has said the same thing happened in Inverness—Afghans being placed ahead of veterans in the housing queue.
Then, GB News got wind of the most damning account.
They discovered authorities had removed Andrew Cook—a British Army veteran who served on seven tours—from his military accommodation in 2023 to make way for Afghan migrants.
Cook had applied in May 2023 to remain in his housing. But his application was denied. By September, the same estate saw what he described as a “large quantity” of Afghans suddenly take up residence.
In short, it appears in isolated cases, the Conservative and then Labour governments put foreign nationals ahead of natives who bled for our country.
Of course, I couldn’t end this deep dive without addressing the convenient timing of last year’s election.
As Judge Chamberlain lifted the super-injunction in May 2024, Shapps launched an immediate appeal, keeping the court order in effect until a judgement in the Court of Appeals could be made.
What happened the very next day? Rishi Sunak called a general election.
So the public went to the polls without knowing that the government had facilitated the resettlement of tens of thousands of potentially hostile migrants, at eye-watering cost to them, all in secret.
If that doesn’t constitute election interference by the courts and those involved—it’s difficult to say what does.
Who knows, maybe Reform UK would be sitting with a couple dozen MPs if the public had known.
What seems clear: the actual leak, catastrophic as it was, is arguably not the centre of the scandal. As with most controversies, the real disgrace lies in what followed. In the cover-up, the concealment, the weaponisation of secrecy that suppressed scrutiny—not of the breach, but of the desperate policies it triggered.
Do you believe our best days lie ahead?
Will you keep watching as our politicians and broadcasters push for yet more surveillance, censorship, and control?
If you want to push back—if not today, maybe someday—supporting independent journalism can (genuinely) make a real impact.
In the past year, The Stark Naked Brief reached over 110 million people on X. Sometimes, all it takes is one post—one uncomfortable truth—to wake someone up and put a dent the uniparty’s monopoly.
Excellent piece, the best I have seen on this story. This is what the BBC should be doing.
End of times.
That's where we are now.
These thousands of Afghans have no right to be here - they knew the risks they were taking and obviously the majority had nothing to do with the British at all.
They all need to be deported. Along with all the other migrants who don't actually want to be British, work, pay tax, be civilised.
They come here to rape and pillage. They bring their own cultures with them.
The politicians and the civil servants and the whole legal world needs to be disbanded. God know how, but we need to reclaim our country and our way of life. The mass immigration of dodgy men needs to be reversed. The politicial system needs to be dismantled and cleaned. Everything politicians touch turns to base metal. Absolutely everything.