What Do We Know About The Afghan Data Breach?

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, Keir Starmer told the House of Commons the previous government had ‘serious questions’ to answer about a major data breach from the Ministry of Defence.

On Tuesday, a major data breach which led to thousands of Afghans being secretly relocated to the UK became public knowledge for the first time. Chris joins Adam to discuss the former government’s account of events, as well as what could happen next.

And, Adam speaks to Larisa Brown, Defence Editor at The Times, about how she broke the story.

Meanwhile in the US, Donald Trump is being pushed by fellow Republicans to follow through on promises he made during the election to release records relating to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Caitriona Perry calls in from Washington to explain why Trump is facing a growing backlash from MAGA supporters, and examines how the president’s rhetoric has changed.

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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Miranda Slade with Shiler Mahmoudi and Anna Harris. The social producer was Jada Meosa John. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.2	Hello, Chris.
0:06.2	Hi.
0:06.9	So it's the last PMQs, but is it actually the summer holidays in Parliament yet?
0:10.5	Not yet.
0:11.4	No, there is a, well, best part of another week to go,
0:15.0	and then the House of Lords is a few days more after that.
0:17.1	And I always think sort of Parliament in politics sort of starts to peter out a little bit once you get to mid-July, but it kind of keeps on going until you get to August. And then sometimes it doesn't stop at all, of course. But there's a, there's a long tale before the summer that properly kicks in, I think.
0:34.9	Well, you know when the summer is really kicked in, when the Edinburgh Festival gets underway. See where I'm going with this? To Edinburgh. Well, yes, literally. Yes, because newscast is going to be at the Edinburgh Fringe on the 4th to the 8th of August. That's Monday to Friday, doing shows with a live audience at 415 for an hour every day. An hour? A whole hour, yeah. and you're not even going to be there. So I don't know what I'm going to fill it with. Just me talking. The Fleming monologue. Yeah, which some days might be good, but some days would not be good. And we've, I mean, most of the tickets are really sold out, though. There's only a handful left. That's what they all say. Yeah, I'll still be flyering on the Royal Mile begging people to come to the show. That's a fair tradition, great tradition of the Edinburgh Festival. But yeah, if you do want to try and get your hands on the last few tickets, please do not go out of your way. The instructions for how to do so are in the episode description of this episode of Newscast.
1:28.5	Now, speaking of episodes, shall we make one?
1:30.6	Let's do it.
1:32.4	Newscast.
1:33.0	Newscast from the BBC.
1:34.8	He has just compared me to the fat controller.
1:37.8	Did I say that?
1:39.2	I can't believe I said that.
1:40.6	Next question.
1:41.4	This is R for the benefit of Earth.
1:44.0	I'm not personally a huge Sabrina Carpenter fam. I don't think I'm being rude. I like landscapes. Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio. And it is Chris at Westminster. And we're going to have another quick catch-up with Washington, D.C. in the second half of this episode.
2:01.2	But the first half is dominated by an absolutely huge story that broke in Westminster on Tuesday morning.
2:07.7	Even though the story itself had been going for years, this is the story of the data breach at the Ministry of Defense that meant that lots of sensitive data about people who'd worked with the British military in Afghanistan
2:19.9	was sent out to people who it shouldn't have been sent out to. And then as a result, the government got a super injunction,
	...

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