The United Kingdom’s immigration system is broken. Tens of thousands have entered the country who should not, and the bureaucracy which processes asylum cases is a creaking wreck. Those who do deserve a safe welcome are left in legal limbo for months, if not years. And yet the Home Office, which is responsible for this chaos, is not even the department in government with the most inefficient and unaccountable bureaucracy. That hard-fought distinction belongs to the Ministry of Defence, which combines profligacy in procurement with an inability to give armed forces families homes that meet even the most basic standards of decency.
So when we learned this week that ministers had sought to block publication of an MoD leak, in which thousands of Afghan asylum claims were mistakenly emailed to the wrong person, it would appear that this is government at its worst. The deployment of a super-injunction, preventing scrutiny of the admission of thousands of foreign nationals to this country, naturally invites condemnation.
But while the anger is easy to understand, it is more important to recognise why ministers acted the way they did. The initial leak of the names was a terrible human error. The manner in which the government holds, reviews and shares data deserves to be scrutinised. Undoubtedly, it should now be overhauled to guarantee not just national security but basic efficiency.
Yet once that inadvertent leak had been brought to the attention of ministers, it was right that efforts were made to ensure the information about Afghans who were at risk of retribution was restricted. While not every name on that spreadsheet was an individual who had given direct assistance to UK forces, or who had been working to support civilised government in Afghanistan, many were and all would have been at risk. The obvious ministerial responsibility was to seek to identify who most needed to be taken out of harm’s way – and to get them to safety without alerting the Taliban.
That is exactly why Ben Wallace, then defence secretary, felt he had to impose these restrictions on free discussion. He was right. It was not just a moral responsibility to those who had risked their lives to support Britain at war, but it was also an important principle for future foreign policy. We cannot expect other allies to risk their lives for us in future conflicts if we do not do everything in our power to help them in extremis.
Both British and Afghan lives were saved by an uncomfortable but necessary news blackout
But did such work really require the full legal armoury of an injunction, then a super-injunction? Again, these are heavy judicial weapons which should be deployed sparingly. But the exfiltration of individuals at risk would, inevitably, have been compromised by the wider awareness, not just of whose names were on any given spreadsheet, but by knowledge of such a spreadsheet’s very existence. Information is a vital weapon in war. The exact nature of how much the Taliban knew could only be imperfectly determined, through the use of intelligence, which itself involves risk for service personnel. Both British and Afghan lives were undoubtedly saved by an uncomfortable but necessary news blackout. The freedom to report is precious. But so are the lives of those who serve in foreign fields and endure daily dangers so that we may sleep safely in our beds.
The decision by Defence Secretary John Healey to allow the super-injunction to be lifted and permit us all, now, to debate this affair is right, given that the risks to those affected have diminished. It is right, too, that an assessment of this policy can now be made. Reform leader Nigel Farage has done just that, denouncing the acts of ministers.
But here we must ask important questions about national security and the function of asylum. Was it wrong to seek to assist those who had fought alongside us in Afghanistan? Would it be helpful to our military if we ignored the plight of allies who served alongside us? Would that mean British soldiers were safer in the future? And would broadcasting the original, terrible error have made the situation for those affected better – or worse?
It is in the nature of government, not least in foreign affairs and defence, that there are seldom clear-cut moral courses. Statecraft involves compromises and trade-offs – sometimes ugly ones. Conflict often requires operational secrecy in the face of hostile intent. But better a Britain that, in this fraught terrain, stands by its allies than a country that chooses expediency over duty.
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