What is at risk? The safety of more than 18,500 Afghans whose personal details were contained in a leaked spreadsheet, the Commons Defence Committee concluded.
The committee found the Ministry of Defence did not have the skills or systems to manage the UKs Afghan relocation programme after Kabul fell, and that secrecy was deployed as a "shield" against proper oversight. It described the incident as a "foreseeable systemic failure", blaming inadequate tools, weak procedures, gaps in organisational continuity, and a poor culture of data protection and accountability.
The breach first came to light in August 2023, but reporting was blocked by a super-injunction until July 2025. The committee said the gagging order, which prevents media reporting on sensitive information and even the injunctions existence, was expected to run for four months but remained in place for almost two years, imposing costs on accountability and public trust.
Investigators traced the leak to a member of MoD personnel who shared a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with a "trusted third party". BBC reporting cited in the inquiry located the origin of the spreadsheet at UK Special Forces headquarters. The file contained the details of every person who had applied to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy, Arap, by January 2022, more than 18,500 applicants in total.
Arap was established in April 2021 to resettle people who feared for their lives because they had worked with British armed forces, including family members of eligible applicants. The scheme was closed to new applications in July 2025.
Committee chairman Tan Dhesi said, "The Ministry of Defence should stick to defence - it should never have been left to run immigration casework schemes." The report also labelled the MoDs reliance on Excel a "continuing cultural failure" and called the overall relocation effort "utterly and obviously inadequate."
The inquiry queried choices that kept parliament and the public in the dark. It criticised the decision not to provide confidential briefings to some parliamentarians, and challenged the governments policy of refusing to comment on special forces matters as inappropriate in this context. "Secrecy has been too easily used as a shield against proper accountability in areas far removed from sensitive operations," Dhesi added.
The committee examined UK Special Forcess role after BBC Panorama reported in February 2024 that British Special Forces had a de facto veto over some Arap applications. Internal Ministry of Defence documents cited in the report show a UKSF officer personally rejected 1,585 resettlement applications linked to Afghan special forces in a matter of weeks in 2023, approving none during that period. Many rejected applicants later reported living in hiding.
The government instituted a review in 2024, and since then 884 former members of Afghan special forces who had been declined have had their rejections overturned. The committee said the "proportion of decisions subsequently overturned demonstrates the seriousness of that failure." A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said the leak "should never have happened" and welcomed the opportunity to learn from the incident.
The report leaves outstanding questions about accountability, the role of special forces in administrative decisions, and how sensitive programmes are managed. It places pressure on the MoD and ministers to explain and repair failures that endangered thousands of people who sought refuge with British assistance.
