The Ministry of Defence took The News Agents podcast to a secret court to block reporting on a major data breach.
Co-host Lewis Goodall has described this as a constitutionally unprecedented move.
Speaking in a special episode, Lewis explained that in summer 2023 he was contacted by a Whitehall source who told him there had been “a catastrophic data breach from the heart of the Ministry of Defence.”
The breach reportedly contained names and contact details of tens of thousands of people who had applied to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme, which offers resettlement to Afghan citizens and their families who worked with the UK in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021.
Lewis said that after calling the Ministry of Defence within minutes to seek comment, he received an email with a court summons for an injunction hearing.
The hearing, held online, included only The News Agents team, a judge, and a top government lawyer. The government asked for an injunction to stop reporting of the story, despite the podcast having no intention to publish until safety issues were addressed.
He revealed the judge then made the unusual suggestion of a superinjunction, which would prevent The News Agents not only from reporting the story but from telling anyone they were blocked from doing so.
Lewis said a superinjunction had never before been used by the state to prevent publication of a story clearly in the public interest.
The government initially argued for a time-limited injunction to allow it to get people out of Afghanistan, but months passed with no update.
Eventually, The News Agents attended a second secret hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice where, according to Lewis, it became clear the government no longer intended to lift the block.
He said the ordeal felt “quite sinister,” adding it meant neither the press nor Parliament could scrutinise the government’s actions, as only a small group of senior figures knew about the injunction.
Listen to the full details of the case on The News Agents podcast on Global Player now.
**UPDATE** Since publishing this article, the Defence Secretary, John Healey has spoken to The News Agents, saying that the person responsible is no longer working on the Afghan brief, but he believes the issue is bigger than one individual’s actions.
He said his priority as Defence Secretary was to get a grip on something that was entirely unprecedented and that accountability will come in due course as the facts are scrutinised.
Asked whether anyone should be fired over the breach, Mr Healey said his first priority was not to conduct a witch hunt on the defence official who released the spreadsheet that caused what he called a profound data loss.
When asked if the official responsible was a soldier, Mr Healey said he was glad to finally talk about the breach, which happened in February 2022 but only came to ministers’ attention in August 2023, and explained he was previously subject to the same court order as journalists.
He said ministers in the previous government should explain the actions they took and that it was not for him to identify or expose the individual involved who mistakenly sent the spreadsheet in error.
Mr Healey also said he believes parliamentary committees are more capable of conducting inquiries than lengthy public inquiries, and that accountability can now start with the lifting of the injunction today.
He said it was very unlikely he would have imposed a superinjunction in 2023, calling it deeply offensive to parliamentary accountability and public knowledge.
When asked if superinjunctions could be used again by the Ministry of Defence, he said it would have to be an extremely high bar but added that accountability and transparency were now being restored.
