John Healey MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  This was a data breach that took place three and a half years ago under the decision and leadership of the previous Government and previous Defence Ministers. The challenge this Government faced was far bigger than the actions of one official that long ago. My full focus since the election in July last year has been to get to grips with the costs, the proportionality—or disproportionality—of the schemes in place, and the lack of accountability to Parliament, freedom of the press and public knowledge. It is that set of factors that has taken up my time and my attention.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  If my hon. Friend writes to me with the details of that case, I will certainly take a hard look at it.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on a significant data protection breach from February 2022 relating to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy. It led to the High Court granting an unprecedented super-injunction and the previous Government establishing a secret Afghan resettlement route. Today I am announcing to the House a change in Government policy. I am closing that resettlement route, disclosing the data loss, and confirming that the Court order was lifted at 12 noon today. Members of this House—including you, Mr Speaker, and me—have been subject to the super-injunction. It is unprecedented. To be clear, the Court has always recognised the parliamentary privilege of proceedings in this House, and Ministers decided not to tell parliamentarians about the data incident at an earlier stage, as the widespread publicity would increase the risk of the Taliban obtaining the dataset. However, as parliamentarians and as Ministers, it has been deeply uncomfortable to be constrained from reporting to this House. I am grateful to be able to disclose the details to Parliament today. I trust that you, Mr Speaker, and Members will bear with me if I take the time to ensure that the House now has the fullest information possible, as I discussed with you yesterday. The facts are as follows. In February 2022, 10 months after the then Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, introduced the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and six months after the fall of Kabul, a Defence official emailed an ARAP case working file outside authorised Government systems. As the House knows, ARAP is the resettlement scheme that this country established for Afghan citizens who worked for, or with, our UK armed forces over the combat years in Afghanistan. Both in opposition and in government, Labour has backed that scheme, and ARAP has had full support from across this House. The official mistakenly believed that they were sending the names of 150 applicants. However, the spreadsheet in fact contained personal information associated with 18,714 Afghans who had applied to either the ex gratia scheme or the ARAP scheme on, or before, 7 January 2022. It contained names and contact details of applicants and, in some instances, information relating to applicants’ family members. 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. It was in clear breach of strict data protection protocols, and was one of many data losses relating to the ARAP scheme during this period. Ministers in the previous Government first became aware of the data loss in mid-August 2023, 18 months after the incident, when personal details of nine individuals from the dataset appeared online. Action was taken to ensure they were swiftly removed, an internal investigation was conducted, and the incident was reported to both the Metropolitan police and the Information Commissioner. The Met deemed that no criminal investigation was necessary, and the Information Commissioner has continued to work with the Department throughout. However, journalists were almost immediately aware of the breach, and the previous Administration applied to the High Court for an injunction to prevent the data loss becoming public. The judge deemed that the risk warranted going further and, on 1 September 2023, granted a super-injunction, which prevented disclosure of the very existence of the injunction. That super-injunction has been in place for nearly two years, during which time eight media organisations and their journalists were served to prohibit any reporting. No Government wish to withhold information from the British public, parliamentarians or the press in this manner. In autumn 2023, previous Ministers started work on establishing a new resettlement scheme specifically designed for people in the compromised dataset who were not eligible for ARAP but who were nevertheless judged to be at the highest risk of reprisals by the Taliban. It is known as the Afghanistan response route, or ARR. It was covered by the super-injunction. The then Government initially established the ARR to resettle a target cohort of around 200 principals, but in early 2024 a combination of Ministers’ decisions on the scheme’s policy design and the court’s views had broadened that category to nearly 3,000 principals. I want to provide assurance to the House and the British public that all individuals relocated under the Afghanistan response route, ARAP or the Home Office’s Afghan citizens resettlement scheme undergo strict national security checks before being able to enter our country. The full number of Afghan arrivals under all schemes has been reported in the regular Home Office statistics, meaning that they are already counted in existing migration figures. As shadow Defence Secretary, I was initially briefed on the ARR by James Heappey, the former Armed Forces Minister, on 12 December 2023, and issued with the super-injunction at the start of that meeting. Other members of the present Cabinet were only informed of the evidence of the data breach, the operation of the ARR, and the existence of the super-injunction on taking office after the general election. By that time, the ARR scheme was fully established and in operation, and it was nearly two and a half years since the data loss. I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to Parliament and to the public. I felt it only right to reassess the decision-making criteria for the ARR. We began, straightaway, to take a hard look at the policy complexities, costs, risks, court hearings and the range of Afghan relocation schemes being run by the previous Government. Cabinet colleagues endorsed the need for new insights in the autumn of last year, while the scheme kept running. In December 2024, I announced the streamlining of the range of Government schemes that we inherited into the Afghan resettlement programme to establish better value for money, a single set of time-limited entitlements and support to get Afghan families resettled. On behalf of the House, I sincerely thank our colleagues in local government, without whom this unified resettlement programme would simply not have been possible. At the beginning of this year, I commissioned Paul Rimmer, a former senior civil servant and ex-deputy chief of Defence Intelligence, to conduct an independent review. The review was concluded and reported to Ministers last month. Today I am releasing a public version of Rimmer’s review, and I am placing a copy of it in the Library of the House. I am very grateful to him for his work. Despite brutal human rights abuses in Afghanistan, the Rimmer review notes the passage of time—it is nearly four years since the fall of Kabul—and concludes: “There is little evidence of intent by the Taleban to conduct a campaign of retribution against” former officials. It also concludes that those who pose a challenge to the Taliban rule now are at greater risk of a reaction from the regime, and that “the wealth of data inherited from the former government” by the Taliban “would already enable them” to target individuals if they wished to do so, which means that it is “highly unlikely” that merely being on the spreadsheet “would be the…piece of information enabling or prompting the Taleban to act.” Rimmer is clear: he stresses the uncertainty in any judgments and does not rule out any risk. Yet he concludes that, given this updated context, the current policy that we inherited “appears an extremely significant intervention…to address the potentially limited net additional risk the incident likely presents.” The Rimmer review is a very significant element, but not the sole element, in the Government’s decision to change policy, to close the ARR and to ensure that the court order is lifted today. Policy concerns about proportionality, public accountability, cost and fairness were also important factors for the Government. This was not a decision taken lightly; it follows a lengthy process, including the Rimmer review, detailed ministerial discussions and repeated consultations with legal advisers. Just as I have changed Government policy in the light of the review, the High Court today, in the light of the review, ruled that there was no tenable basis for the continuation of the super-injunction. To date, 900 ARR principals are in Britain or in transit, together with 3,600 family members, at a cost of about £400 million. From today, there will be no new ARR offers of relocation to Britain. From today, the route is closed. However, we will honour the 600 invitations already made to any named persons still in Afghanistan and their immediate family. When this nation makes a promise, we should keep it. Today I am also restoring full accountability for the Government’s Afghan relocation schemes to Parliament, and I would expect our Select Committees now to hold us to account through in-depth inquiries. Let me turn to the practical action that we have taken as a result of this policy change and in preparation for the lifting of the court’s super-injunction. My first concern has been to notify as many people as possible who are affected by the data incident and to provide them with further advice. The Ministry of Defence has done that this morning, although it has not been possible to contact every individual on the dataset, owing to its incomplete and out-of-date information. Anyone who may be concerned can head to our new dedicated gov.uk website, where they will find more information about the data loss; further security advice; a self-checker tool, which will inform them whether their application has been affected; and contact steps for the detailed information services centre that the MOD has established. This serious data incident should never have happened. It may have occurred three years ago, under the previous Government, but to all those whose information was compromised I offer a sincere apology today on behalf of the British Government, and I trust that the shadow Defence Secretary, as a former Defence Minister, will join me in that. To date, 36,000 Afghans have been accepted by Britain through the range of relocation schemes. Britain has honoured the duty we owe to those who worked and fought alongside our troops in Afghanistan. The British people have welcomed them to our country, and in turn, this is their chance to rebuild their lives, their chance to contribute to and share in the prosperity of our great country. However, none of these relocation schemes can carry on in perpetuity, nor were they conceived to do so. That is why we announced on 1 July that we would no longer accept new applicants to ARAP. However, I reiterate the commitment that we made then to processing every outstanding ARAP application and relocating those who might prove eligible, and we will complete our commitment to continuing the review of the Triples. I recognise that my statement will prompt many questions. I would have liked to settle these matters sooner, because full accountability to Parliament and freedom of the press matter deeply to me—they are fundamental to our British way of life. However, lives may have been at stake, and I have spent many hours thinking about this decision; thinking about the safety and the lives of people I will never meet, in a far-off land in which 457 of our servicemen and women lost their lives. So this weighs heavily on me, and it is why no Government could take such decisions lightly, without sound grounds and hard deliberations. During the last year we have conducted and now completed this work. I commend my statement to the House.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  Those who have received invitations will have those honoured. On the concerns that the hon. Member may have about the assessment of risk in Afghanistan, I recommend that he reads Paul Rimmer’s report, which is comprehensive and up to date. It inevitably contains some uncertainties, and it identifies the risks that are inevitably there in any policy judgments that Government Ministers like me must make. I will also reinforce the point that the hon. Member made about the welcome and the pride with which the Welsh people embrace those Afghans who come to rebuild their lives in our country.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the way in which the hon. Gentleman raised his concerns about that case. If he writes to me with the details, I will take a hard look at it.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I will indeed reaffirm our continuing commitment to honouring the obligations and duty that we owe to those who served or worked alongside our forces. Through the ARAP scheme, we will complete the processing of any outstanding applications, and any who prove eligible will get full relocation and resettlement support. I am glad to be able to restore a degree of that parliamentary scrutiny and transparency that our system in Britain depends on.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I can only recommend that my hon. Friend reads in full the public version of the Rimmer report, which I have published today. Rimmer sets out conclusions and an updated risk assessment, taking an up-to-date view, recognising that the situation in Afghanistan is nearly four years on from the point at which the Taliban took control and that the present regime sees those who may threaten the regime itself as a greater threat to their operation than any former Government official or serving official. I recommend that my hon. Friend reads that report, and I expect that he, as the Defence Committee Chair, will want to take full advantage of this restored parliamentary accountability. I have always believed that our Select Committee system in this House is perfectly capable of, and better suited to, many of the in-depth inquiries that often get punted into public inquiries or calls for such inquiries. I hope he will have noted the fact that the shadow Defence Secretary also endorsed that view.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I am not in a position to make a decision about publishing the legal advice that led the previous Government and Defence Secretary to extend the scheme. It is not legal advice that I have had access to or seen. On the question of costs, the hon. Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, will do the job. I can confirm that the total cost of all Afghan relocation schemes to date, for those 36,000 Afghans who have been brought to this country, is around £2.7 billion. The expected cost over the entire lifetime of those schemes, to bring in anyone who may subsequently prove eligible, is between £5.5 billion and £6 billion. That is at least £1.2 billion less because of the policy decisions I have taken this afternoon.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend signals some of the areas that the necessary parliamentary scrutiny will consider. I have to say, it was 18 months, not one year, between the original data loss and when it was first discovered and brought to Ministers’ attention in August 2023. To his second question about the spreadsheet, this was a period in which officials and the Department were working at breakneck speed to put in place novel schemes that were urgently needed. Clearly that sort of spreadsheet software is inappropriate for this casework system, and it is no longer used in that way. Finally, on the role of my predecessors, Grant Shapps was the Defence Secretary who oversaw the design, extension and establishment of the ARR scheme.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right in the criticism she levels. I would just say, however, that I do not think any Minister could stand here and guarantee that there will never be another data breach, data loss or data error in that way, in the same way that no chief executive of any organisation could say so. I can say that we have taken steps to reduce the risk of that happening and that we no longer do any casework on spreadsheets, which was the technology that was available in the early days of this scheme. That was part of the problem, I think, in the inadvertent mistake made by the Defence official.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I hesitate to be too blunt with the right hon. Gentleman, because I have a great deal of respect for him. If any applicant is not eligible under the criteria of the scheme that this House has approved and the Government have in place and operate, that can really only lead to one decision. He encourages me to look in a creative way at other options. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces is very familiar with the case that the right hon. Gentleman raises. We will look at it again, but I do not want to raise false hopes for him, or for the man whom he describes so vividly, and with such concern.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  We made a statement about the closure of the Home Office-run ARAP and ACRS on 1 July, and the hon. Lady will have had opportunities since then to raise those matters in the House. On the information to those who may be affected, we will honour the invitations that have been issued to 600 ARR individuals. To everyone else in the dataset, we have communicated the latest position this morning. We are offering access to further advice through the designated area of the gov.uk website, and that includes steps that individuals can take, if they wish, to get in touch with our information services centre, which has been set up by the MOD to deal with questions and concerns that people may have.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has been one of the most active and most assiduous Members of this House in championing the cause of her constituents and others who may be trying to get access to the scheme. It has been over four years since the ARAP scheme was first established, and there are still 22,000 ARAP applicants whose applications will be processed. Where eligibility is established, they will be offered the relocation that this country has undertaken to give them. Those applicants need not have applied from Afghanistan, but many did so. From the outset, one of the most important features of the ARAP scheme—given that the Taliban had taken over in Afghanistan—was that it applied to female Afghans who formerly worked alongside our own forces and even served in the Afghan forces alongside our own, who have potentially been at greatest risk. For them, the offer to relocate to this country, and to rebuild and re-establish a life here, has been very important.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I am sure Ministers will report to my right hon. Friend’s Committee if she invites us to do so. She is right to make the big argument that anyone providing data to the British Government has a right to expect that personal data to be stored securely, handled safely and not subject to the sort of loss or breach that we saw too often in the early days of the Afghan relocation schemes.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I do. Where female Afghans are eligible for the schemes, it has been important that they have been able to apply, and we have been able to offer them the same relocation and resettlement as others. My hon. Friend speaks with great authority and passion about that period in Afghanistan four years ago, when the Taliban were taking over as Kabul fell. I am sad to say that her characterisation of policy confusion and programme failure is exactly what was going on in the British Government at that time.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I think that I reported earlier to the House that the incident under previous Ministers was reported to the Metropolitan police. It was also reported to the Information Commissioner. The Met police deemed no criminal investigation or further action to be required. The Information Commissioner still has the case—we are working closely with them—and I would expect some conclusions and judgments from the Information Commissioner’s Office before too long, but I simply cannot say when.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend poses questions to me in the House this afternoon that I simply cannot answer. The events date from a period well before I took office. As he above all will appreciate, new Ministers have no access to the policy advice, the legal assessments, any of the papers or even the threat assessments that previous Government Ministers may have commissioned. I think that that subject is, if I may say so, proper material for the Defence Committee, on which he serves in such a distinguished way, to perhaps take a deeper look at and to call witnesses on who may be in a better position to answer those questions than I am this afternoon. Finally, my hon. Friend asked about software. I am afraid I am one of the last people to be able to give an authoritative view on the question of cyber-security and up-to-date software, but the nature of this work means that there is a constant requirement for new software and for updating. The fact that we have taken the steps in the past 12 months that our experts and I have regarded as necessary does not necessarily mean that the steps taken by previous Ministers were inadequate. What I can say, however, is that when I was the shadow Defence Secretary, we were aware of and exposed in opposition the building backlogs in casework, the regular data breaches and the broken promises that sadly too often characterised the Afghan relocation schemes, particularly in the early years.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend speaks powerfully. Where there are outstanding ARAP applications, they will be processed. Where there are outstanding Triples cases that fall into the second phase of the review, that review will be completed, and where eligibility for ARAP entitlement is established, that will be honoured.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I will take a look at the case and, if required, I will speak to my right hon. Friend and colleague, the Home Secretary.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I am certainly grateful for his support for my statement this afternoon. Although he has not said it, he is a big champion of press freedom and I expect that he also recognises that an important part of our decision has been the period in which we have seen no public knowledge, no media reporting and no parliamentary accountability. We set that right today.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I wanted this House to hear the policy decisions that I had made and I wanted this House to hear them first. The judge, aware of the decisions that the Government had taken and the announcements that I was planning to make today, took his decision to lift the super-injunction and to deliver his court judgment at noon. On the question of the individual responsible for the original data loss, that is not something I am prepared to pursue in this House. Clearly the overarching responsibility was with the Ministers at the time. My full focus has been to get to grips with what we inherited, take a fresh look at the policy that was in place, and be in a position—with the proper degree of deliberation, and with sound grounds—to come to the House and announce the changes I have this afternoon.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I agree 100%, Mr Speaker. My hon. Friend speaks so plainly, so forcefully and so passionately. When we first debated the obligation to put in place the ARAP scheme four or five years ago, when I was shadow Secretary of State for Defence, one of the things that struck me most was that those who felt fiercest were, understandably, those who had served—those in this House who had been part of the 140,000 British men and women who had served in Afghanistan over 20 years—because they recognised just what a debt this country and they owe to people like those whom my hon. Friend’s husband speaks about.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  It is more than four years since the previous Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, launched on behalf of this country the Afghan relocations and assistance policy with the full support of this House. There has been ample time for anyone who could conceivably believe they might qualify to make their application. None of those schemes, including ARAP, was ever conceived or designed to last in perpetuity, which is why we closed them at the beginning of this month to any new applicants, and why I have taken the decision, based on Rimmer and the other factors I have identified, to end the ARR scheme today. On the ARAP applicants—the sort of Afghans whom the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about—we will complete any remaining applications that are in our system waiting to be processed. On the Triples, we will complete the second phase of the review that we have given a commitment to them and to this House to undertake.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I do, indeed. One important feature for me in being able to make this statement and to set out the details before the House this afternoon has been that we are now restoring the proper parliamentary accountability of Ministers to this House for the decisions that we take, the schemes that we run and the spending that we commit on behalf of the taxpayer. I look forward to Members in this Chamber—and, I hope, in the appropriate Committees—undertaking their proper constitutional role in a way they have not been able to do over the past two years without being constrained.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  I look forward to being called to give evidence to the hon. Gentleman’s Committee if it does launch such an inquiry. To the best of my knowledge and belief, no serving member of our armed forces is put at risk by the data loss.