THE BRITISH PEOPLE ‘DESERVE ANSWERS’ ON AFGHAN MIGRANT COVER-UP, SAYS DEFENCE SECRETARY
DEFENCE Secretary John Healey has said that the British people “deserve answers” on the Afghan migrant scheme cover-up.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “There were indeed nearly 19,000 individuals, sort of named on this dataset. In some cases, there were some family members identified. Many of these people have no connection with Britain. They’re not eligible for the special schemes that Britain put in place to recognise the duty we owe to those who served or worked with our armed forces.
“But nevertheless, this is a huge data breach that had never been disclosed. It led to the previous government setting up a secret resettlement scheme bringing Afghans into this country and covered all by a totally unprecedented super-injunction that meant that the public couldn’t know about this, the press couldn’t report about it, and Parliament couldn’t scrutinise this.
“All that changed, it changed yesterday because the announcement I was able to make of the government’s change of policy in Parliament yesterday.
“Where people have helped our forces, worked alongside our forces, put their own lives, in some cases, as Afghans, on the line, they are eligible for a different scheme, the ARAP scheme, that has had all-party support and is an important way that our country discharges that duty to them.
“The names on this list are not eligible for that and the important step that I’ve been able to take off the back of an independent review that I commissioned is a fresh look at the situation in Afghanistan now, nearly four years on from the Taliban takeover, which identifies and concludes it’s highly unlikely that simply being a name on this data set increases the risk of being targeted in Afghanistan, and it’s on that basis that I published the report.
“I’ve ended this special secret scheme. I’ve disclosed this data breach and, importantly, allowed the judge to respond to my application to have the super-injunction lifted so the British people deserve answers, and from today they can start to get them.”
He added: ”I don’t know about you, but I find it deeply uncomfortable, and I’m deeply concerned that we have, after all, our British system that works on freedom of the media.
“It works on Parliament being able to challenge and scrutinise the decisions of ministers like me for what we do in people’s names, and in particular, it requires us to be able to report to parliament about the policies we put in place, the taxpayers’ money that we spent,
“That hasn’t been possible with a super-injunction, but that is possible now, and I expect the ministers in the previous government that took these decisions about the injunction, and in particular, to set up and run this special relocation scheme, I expect them to be held account, just like I’m being held to account, and expect to be held further to account the decisions I’ve taken.”
