UK Defence Committee says MoD leaked 25,000 Afghan records

A major data breach that exposed the personal details of thousands of Afghans seeking UK resettlement was a "foreseeable systemic failure" by the Ministry of Defence, a parliamentary committee has concluded. The House of Commons Defence Committee found the MoD lacked the expertise to run the Afghan relocation scheme and used excessive secrecy as a shield against accountability. The breach, which occurred in February 2022, involved a British soldier accidentally emailing a spreadsheet containing the confidential details of approximately 25,000 applicants to a person outside the government.

The leaked data pertained to Afghans who had applied for relocation under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), a scheme designed for those at risk of Taliban reprisals due to their work with British forces. Officials initially believed the spreadsheet contained information on only about 150 people, but it was later discovered to hold hidden data on an additional 18,500 applicants. The committee's report, published on July 29, 2026, criticized the MoD's reliance on large Excel files to store highly sensitive information, calling it a "continuing cultural failure."