Commons Speaker should have made ministers tell MPs about Afghan data leak, says Harriet Harman

Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle knew about Afghan data leak and should have made ministers tell MPs, Dame Harriet Harman has claimed.

Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, the Labour peer said the Speaker - whose job she ran for in 2019 - should have asked for a key select committee to be made aware.

A spokesperson for the Speaker said he was "himself under a super-injunction" and so "would have been under severe legal restrictions".

A massive data breach by the British military that was only made public this week exposed the personal information of close to 20,000 Afghan individuals, endangering them and their families.

Successive governments tried to keep the leak secret with a super-injunction, meaning the UK only informed everyone affected on Tuesday - three-and-a-half years after their data was compromised.

The breach occurred in February 2022, when Boris Johnson was prime minister, but was only discovered by the British military in August 2023.

A super-injunction, which prevented the reporting of the mistake, was imposed in September of that year.

The previous Conservative government set-up a secret scheme in 2023 - which can only now be revealed - to relocate Afghan nationals impacted by the data breach but who were not eligible for an existing programme to relocate and assist individuals who had worked for the British government in Afghanistan.

Some 6,900 Afghans - comprising 1,500 people named on the list as well as their dependents - are being relocated to the UK as part of this programme.

Dame Harriet said: "The Speaker was warned, 'If somebody's going to say something which breaches this injunction, will you please shut them up straight away if an MP does this', and he agreed to do that.

"But what he should have done at the time is he should have said, but parliamentary accountability is important. I'm the Speaker. I'm going to stand up for parliamentary accountability. And you must tell the Intelligence and Security Committee and allow them to hold you to account.

"What's happened now is now that this is out in the open, the Intelligence and Security Committee is going to look at everything. So, it will be able to see all the papers from the MoD [Ministry of Defence]."

Pressed on whether she meant the Speaker had failed to do his job, Dame Harriet replied: "Yes, and it's a bit invidious for me to be saying that because, of course, at that time, Lindsay Hoyle was elected a speaker, I myself ran to be speaker, and the House chose him rather than me.

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"So it's a bit bad to make this proposal to somebody who actually won an election you didn't win. But actually, if you think about the Speaker's role to stand up for parliament, to make sure that government is properly scrutinised, when you've got a committee there, which is security cleared to the highest level, appointed by the prime minister, and whose job is exactly to do this."

A spokesperson for the Speaker said: "As has been made clear, Mr Speaker was himself under a super-injunction, and so would have been under severe legal restrictions regarding speaking about this.

"He would have had no awareness which organisations or individuals were and were not already aware of this matter.

"The injunction could not constrain proceedings in parliament and between being served with the injunction in September 2023 and the 2024 general election, Mr Speaker granted four Urgent Questions on matters relating to Afghan refugees and resettlement schemes.

"Furthermore, as set out in the Justice and Security Act 2013, the Speaker has no powers to refer matters to the Intelligence and Security Committee."