We’re all owed an apology for the disastrous MoD data leak – UK Times

Maybe the most insidious aspect of the Afghan leak scandal, in terms of our constitutional safeguards, was that the government went to the speakers of both Houses of Parliament to brief them as to why they should not permit any questions about the issue to be raised by MPs or peers.

This was to prevent anyone using parliamentary privilege, which trumps almost everything – to find out what was going on, why it was going in and who was accountable – in other words, the normal democratic process.

This was, of course, on top of the other measures taken to guarantee that this appalling blunder be kept quiet – principally, the now notorious super injunction, which banned all mention of the matter and even the existence of the injunction itself. As few people as possible within government were informed – we still don’t know who – and the natural bureaucratic instinct to deny, cover up and deflect was followed.

Only with a change of government – and then only because the case for the use of the injunction had become unsupportable – have the British public learned about the danger to the lives of brave Afghan allies, not to mention the huge total cost of clearing the mess up – some £7bn.

As one of the judges involved declared on a previous occasion: “Am I going bonkers?” If nothing else, that exasperated remark reminds us of the value of an independent judiciary.

To be fair to Ben Wallace and Grant Shapps, the two defence secretaries in post at the time of these events, the initial injunction had some justification, as Wallace has argued – he “makes no apology” for it, even now, despite the fierce backlash.

Wallace insists it may have prevented harm to our former Afghan comrades in arms on the list of applicants for resettlement in the UK (and some with much less of a claim to settle). He says there was good reason to prevent the Taliban getting their hands in sensitive details – including the work these individuals did for the British, which would be evidence, if such things ever matter to the Taliban.

There was more than just a desire to avoid a crushingly embarrassing political scandal from breaking at a time when the Conservative government was already incredibly unpopular and heading for an historic defeat at the election. But the people at the top of the Tory government wouldn’t have been human if such base electoral thoughts hadn’t crossed their minds.

Rishi Sunak as prime minister, Jeremy Hunt as chancellor – and the law officers, including justice secretary Alex Chalk – surely must have known something about the superinjunction and the reasons for it. Why did they go along with it for so long?

Even if all the individuals concerned acted honourably and lawfully and with the best of intentions, to the public – and indeed most MPs, in place then and now – it resembles a conspiracy by the establishment perpetrated against the British people and parliament itself, by those who should have known better.

Faith in politics and trust in its practitioners has been eroded by decades of sleaze and scandals. A weary, disillusioned public will look at this latest convoluted tale with a dreary mood of resignation.

It’s hard to see how anyone emerges with much credit, because to this day, no one, not even the clerk who used a private computer outside the government network to send the email to the wrong people, has lost their job or been made properly accountable.

Although the circumstances are radically different, it is striking that much the same sort of behaviour can still be observed at the BBC, in light of its own recent troubles; and before that this lack of responsibility and weak punishment for wrong has been a feature of successive depressing episodes, from the MPs’ expenses scandal to the horrific Post Office Horizon disaster to cover-ups at the banks in the financial crisis and neglect in NHS maternity wards.

Frankly, the Afghan leak story should be even more shocking than it is. Perhaps we’re just getting more used to this sort of thing.