London's Afghan leak: rightly a scandal?
After a data leak that put 19,000 people at risk, the British government relocated thousands of Afghans to the UK from August 2023 to protect them from the Taliban - at an estimated cost of 400 million pounds so far. Both the data breach and the evacuation scheme were kept strictly secret by means of a so-called 'superinjunction', which has now been lifted by the courts.
A shield for official incompetence
The Times criticises the practice of keeping sensitive matters secret for so long:
“When the party seeking to conceal their actions for this length of time is the government, and when the parties being kept in the dark are the public and parliament, it risks becoming a tool of authoritarianism. ... The superinjunction was granted in September 2023, supposedly as a four-month measure to help cloak a rescue. But it would last for almost two years. ... The superinjunction continued to act as a shield for official incompetence. ... In terms of free speech the superinjunction is a weapon of mass destruction. No government should be allowed to employ one again.”
Fulfilling a moral obligation
The Financial Times shows understanding for the government's course of action:
“Once the Conservative government learned of the leak in August 2023 it had a clear moral obligation to protect those put at risk, including creating a new scheme for several thousand people on the list most at risk who were not eligible for the existing relocation plan. Failure to safeguard all those in the dataset, had the Taliban government obtained it, could have left individuals who had supported British interests vulnerable to reprisals including torture or murder. It could also have destroyed local trust in UK forces in operations elsewhere.”