Shapps said if there was any doubt, erring on the side of caution was "entirely justified", adding his focus was on "saving lives". The data of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had worked with the British during the 20-year war in Afghanistan and had applied to resettle in the UK were inadvertently leaked in February 2022.

Sean Humber, from law firm Leigh Day, said that a data breach of thousands of Afghans’ personal information was ‘catastrophic’.

In his first comments since news of an unprecedented superinjunction was made public, the ex-Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said his focus was on 'sorting out the mess and saving lives'

More than 16,000 Afghans were secretly brought to the UK in largest covert peacetime evacuation after MoD put them in danger of being targeted by the Taliban. Social affairs correspondent Holly Bancro

News Agents podcast co-host Lewis Goodall has warned that the wide-ranging super injunction used to silence UK media for two years sets a “profoundly dangerous” precedent.

Over 18,000 Afghan citizens eligible to relocate to the UK under a government programme to protect them from the Taliban were put at risk in a heretofore unreportable data breach.

Our community has reacted with anger, disbelief and deep concern to revelations that a catastrophic Ministry of Defence data breach, which put tens of thousands of Afghans at risk, was kept hidden under a superinjunction for nearly two years,