Many questions arise from the astonishing story of the Afghan data leak, but one is why the government seems to have no idea how much it will cost, says Eliot Wilson

The announcement last week by defence secretary John Healey that the government had for two years had a super-injunction to conceal a massive loss of classified data was a tough story to unpack.

It started with a soldier or Ministry of Defence civil servant accidentally leaking a spreadsheet of names and details of nearly 20,000 Afghan nationals who had assisted UK forces during our deployment, as well as their dependents, and wanted to move to Britain. The MoD was unaware of this security breach for 18 months, and when it was discovered, the then-defence secretary Ben Wallace applied to the High Court for a four-month injunction to allow the situation to be rectified. Mr Justice Knowles went a step further, and issued a super-injunction, which has only just been lifted.

Many issues have fallen out of Healey’s statement, and there is a great deal of confusion on a number of points. One is how much the whole episode has cost and will cost, and here claims have varied wildly. Healey told the Commons that Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), set up to deal with the crisis, had so far cost £400m but said when interviewed the following day that the final bill will be around £800-850m.

According to The Times, however, last October the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, approved a plan drawn up by the previous government which foresaw spending £7bn over five years to relocate 25,000 Afghans. The ministry of defence contends that this figure applies to the overall cost of all the relocation schemes.

None of this is small-scale expenditure, but there is clearly a huge difference between something which costs £800m and something which runs to ten times that amount. The MoD is being characteristically secretive, and will not give costings for around 1,000 Afghans who were relocated purely because of the data breach, or a timeframe for the ARR. Of course it is impossible to anticipate future costs to the last sou, but this kind of disparity suggests a much deeper level of confusion and contradiction.

Scrutiny

It is hardly destroying anyone’s cherished illusions to say that governments will manipulate figures to achieve as large or small a sum as suits their political need. The current crisis, however, needs some kind of verification or adjudication, some solid and transparent numbers that can be accepted by everyone.