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Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm.

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. Coming up this week.

Ruth Fox: Thousands of people were put at risk of murder by the Taliban and millions, potentially billions, in taxpayers' money were spent on a secret Afghan relocation scheme.

We talk to legal expert Joshua Rozenberg about why this week's revelations of a data leak of Afghan personnel who worked with British forces poses serious questions for Parliament.

Mark D'Arcy: Should secret evidence to the Northern Ireland committee be handed to the inquiry investigating whether the security services could have stopped one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles, the 1998 Omagh bombing.

Ruth Fox: And withdrawing the party whip from the [00:01:00] government's social security rebels - necessary action to restore the government's authority or deepening the rift on the Labour benches?

Mark D'Arcy: But first, Ruth, let's turn to the astounding story that emerged this week about how a Government data breach leaked details of thousands of people who had applied to come to Britain under the scheme to help Afghans that had worked with British forces and about the extraordinary veil of secrecy that was drawn over it for two years.

Ruth Fox: Yeah, Mark, I mean, what seems to have happened is the leak came when a spreadsheet was accidentally emailed from outside the Government in February, 2022. The fear was that if the Taliban regime now in control of Kabul got hold of the data, those people on that spreadsheet would be at risk of revenge attacks.

But extraordinarily, it seems the Defence Secretary and other senior MOD officials didn't know about the breach for 18 months and when it was discovered, the Government went to court to seek an injunction to keep [00:02:00] news of the data breach from being published. But it seems that the judge in that case went further than the government's lawyers had asked and granted what's known as a super injunction. An injunction that's so powerful that even its very existence can't be disclosed.

Mark D'Arcy: And the injunction remained in place when Labour came into office last year. It effectively prevented not only media reporting, but also parliamentary discussion. So the fact of a major data breach in government, the creation of a new immigration route for Afghans now thought to be at risk because of it, and the multimillion pound costs it created all went un debated at Westminster.

Ruth Fox: This week after a fresh risk assessment, the government's gone public and the high court judge, Mr. Justice Chamberlain, bit of a hero in this case, has finally lifted the super injunction. And the Defence Secretary John Healey, made the statement to MPs.

Mark D'Arcy: So what price parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary privilege, the special rights that allow MPs and Peers to speak freely without facing prosecution in the courts.[00:03:00]

Well, to explore the intricacies of all this, we turn to legal expert Joshua Rozenberg, and we began by asking him to explain what exactly is a super injunction and can it really bind Parliament.

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