Shapps defends secrecy over Afghan data breach handling

Former defence secretary Sir Grant Shapps has defended his decision to withhold briefings from senior parliamentarians for around a month following the Afghan data breach, telling MPs he believed wider disclosure could have put lives at risk.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons Defence Committee, Shapps acknowledged that he chose not to brief the shadow defence secretary, the Chair of the Defence Committee or the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee during the early stages of the crisis. Pressed by committee chair Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, Shapps confirmed the delay lasted about a month, arguing that his priority was first establishing the facts before widening awareness of the breach. He told MPs that the decision was not about trust, but about risk management.

“In any crisis situation, the first thing to do is not to widen the scope,” he said. “The first thing is to find the facts and then start to brief others.”

Shapps repeatedly insisted that even a marginal increase in the number of people aware of the existence of the compromised list could have increased the danger to Afghan nationals and British personnel.

“Even a 1% greater risk is a 1% greater risk that people will die, including British forces,” he said.

Committee members challenged that justification, pointing out that journalists, activists and Afghans were already aware of the breach, and that details had appeared publicly online. The chair described the failure to brief elected MPs as a serious breakdown in democratic accountability. Shapps rejected that criticism, arguing that executive authority must sometimes override parliamentary convention in extreme circumstances.

“There are just times where the state has to go about its business through Executive power,” he said, adding that he would rather justify his actions to Parliament later than explain why people had died. He also pushed back on comparisons with routine parliamentary scrutiny, stating that some information could not be shared even with senior MPs. “There are lots of things that we do not share with parliamentarians,” he said, citing nuclear submarine positions and classified operational details as examples.

The exchange formed part of the Defence Committee’s inquiry into the Afghan data breach and the handling of resettlement schemes, with Shapps appearing alongside former defence secretary Ben Wallace and former armed forces minister James Heappey. The committee has yet to publish its conclusions, but members indicated that they believed the decision to restrict briefings had worsened the political and institutional fallout from the breach.