BONUS EPISODE: Exclusive - Defence secretary on the "catastrophic" Afghan leak
The News Agents
Global
4.2 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
The government admitted today that the superinjunction which for two years prevented us from reporting on a “catastrophic” data breach which put the lives of 100,000 Afghans at potentially lethal risk by the Taliban was “constitutionally unprecedented”.
The Defence secretary stood up in the Commons to issue an apology to those Afghans whose data had been leaked, and said that it had been “deeply uncomfortable” to have kept parliament - and the public - in the dark.
On the day that the story finally became public, John Healey came in to speak exclusively to Lewis, the first journalist to be issued with a superinjunction by the MoD.
You can listen to Lewis’s special episode on the story that the government spent two years from preventing us from telling here:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.1 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:11.7 | We now come to the statement, Secretary of State for Defence, John Heelitt. |
| 0:17.4 | With the petition, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on a significant data protection |
| 0:22.2 | breach from February 2022 relating to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy. |
| 0:30.2 | This led to the High Court granting an unprecedented super injunction and the previous government |
| 0:37.0 | establishing a secret Afghan resettlement route. |
| 0:40.3 | Today I'm announcing to the House a change in government policy. |
| 0:46.3 | I'm closing this resettlement route, I'm disclosing the data loss and I'm confirming that the court order was lifted at 12 noon today. |
| 0:59.0 | Members of this House, including you, Mr. Speaker, and myself, have been subject to this super-injunction. |
| 1:07.2 | It is unprecedented. And to be clear, the court has always reckoned. |
| 1:11.6 | That was John Healy, the Defence Secretary in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon, |
| 1:15.6 | informing his fellow MPs that Parliament had been kept in the dark by successive governments |
| 1:21.6 | for two years about the catastrophic data breach at the Ministry of Defence, |
| 1:26.6 | which we on the news agents were |
| 1:29.0 | injuncted about and could finally only report on earlier today. That news has shocked Parliament |
| 1:36.2 | and Westminster. Now, if you're coming at this fresh, might I suggest you just hit the |
| 1:41.1 | pause button this episode? Scroll back one on your feed and listen to our |
| 1:45.1 | special episode about the leak and the super injunction where we explain the extraordinary secret |
| 1:51.6 | process to which we have been subjected for the last two years if however you've listened to that |
| 1:58.7 | already and you like us want some want some answers, then stay listening. |
| 2:03.9 | Because we're joined exclusively now by the man himself, the Defence Secretary John Healy. |
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