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Former defence secretary Sir Ben Wallace said he makes "no apology" for stopping the reporting of a leak that revealed data about thousands of Afghans who had supported British forces.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k8yvj89kyo

Did anyone expect him to ?

While there might have been a case for the injunction for a relatively short period of time while damage was assessed (6 months perhaps), there's absolutely no case for keeping this covered up for so long.

Labour were right to review it - but why did it take them an entire year to come to what ought to have been a completely obvious conclusion ?

Did they come to the obvious conclusion?

From the reporting last night, it seems that the Judge made the decision for them, so they never did.

I honestly don't know; the story has only been out for a day.
At least their DefSec has had the grace to admit being troubled by it. That hardly excuses him, but it is a recognition that the issue is serious.

As for Wallace, the original leak ought to have been a clear resignation matter for him - there had been a similar leak earlier, and he had specifically promised that there would be no repetition.
Covering it up via super injunction - and keeping Parliament and electorate blind on contentious political issues throughout an election campaign - is blatantly undemocratic.

Wallace should be condemned across the political spectrum.
The relevant select committee should call both him and John Healey before them immediately.

Apparently, the Speaker has also been involved throughout in ensuring no Parliamentary questions on the matter.
MPs need to question him, and probably sack him. His job is to act for them, not the government.

The problem Healey has is that Labour kept the super injunction in place for longer than the previous government, so clearly not that troubled.
That aside this absolutely requires a parliamentary inquiry and accountability

Worse. The Labour government appealed AGAINST lifting the super injunction. They wanted it; they liked it

It is a feast of lies inside a carnival of lies. Many many people should resign, and the more you learn the worse it gets

Also looks like they increased the funding and scope of the programme once they got in.
Hmmmmm, a trail of deceit and disgrace from Wallace onwards. Full inquiry!

Great, so we spend another £7 billion to find out that 'lessons have been learned.'

Really, we need to change so that Civil Servants are held accountable, legally and morally, for their actions. It may have been feasible in the past to blame ministers, when departments were small and most policy was directly controlled by them, but it simply isn't any more.

We still have, for example, a Permanent Secretary at the DfE who hosted an unlawful works party in lockdown and then gave completely the wrong budget to all schools plunging many of them into crisis. She's apologised for both, but that isn't good enough. She should have been sacked (as anyone in any other field would have been).

And Simon Case oversaw more car crashes than a medic at a junkyard rally, but he was eventually allowed to retire on health grounds.

As long as we continue to tolerate failures and disasters like this we will continue to have them. We need to start being more proactive as a country and political system in rooting them out.

They can't even blame the Tories on inflation, the previous government left office with inflation down to 2% and generally falling/stable. This is all on Labour and their idiotic tax/spending policies. There's no new external shocks, no COVID, the wars in Ukraine/Israel have already been factored in, Trump's tariffs should make UK prices lower given export diversion by China and other affected countries.

If ever we needed evidence that Labour haven't got a clue how to run the economy this is it. In fairly benign conditions, with no substantial external factors they've let inflation go up from 2.2% when they took over in July to 3.6% last month and still rising. They've caused this, not global conditions, not the previous government, they did. The Tories need to absolutely destroy them on inflation, they actually did the hard work and got inflation back down to acceptable levels, Labour have completely thrown that away.

The Telegraph has the full judicial exchange on the Afghans:

Mr Justice Chamberlain
When you are dealing with public expenditure of that magnitude [£7billion]…it's not possible to lose that amount of money down the back of the sofa. It's not secret intelligence programmes - it's putting real people up in real accommodation in the UK without revealing it's happening. There was going to be an announcement made [to Parliament] but which…the word 'cover' is used. The basis of the expenditure of all of this money isn't going to be revealed.

Jude Bunting KC
One of the key issues in the political debate right now is who is telling the truth about the public deficit. This is directly relevant to that debate. And another key issue is immigration. The injunction is stopping informed debate about how to house people coming to this country...That 'agreed narrative' is misleading the public by omission.'

Mr Justice Chamberlain
The statement to Parliament will 'provide cover'. It is a completely unprecedented situation, but we are seeing a witness statement indicating a statement to Parliament to provide 'cover'. It is a very, very striking thing.

Jude Bunting KC
The Government is saying it is going to deliberately mislead the public.

Mr Justice Chamberlain
It is very striking.

Jude Bunting KC
It is corrosive of democracy. It prevents the public being informed about the reason for £6billion of expenditure, at a time when immigration is at the forefront of debate. The courts have enabled the government to put a false narrative in place that would be corrosive.

Mr Justice Chamberlain
How feasible [is it] to spend that amount of money without the facts coming to light? But we are now saying how it was feasible: making a statement that provides cover and agree a narrative which is not a true narrative, or not a full narrative.

Jude Bunting KC
Journalists will be unable to ask questions or report or correct and fill in gaps.

Cathryn McGahey KC
It is acknowledged that the public's ability to know how its money is being spent and parliamentary scrutiny [are being impeded] but on the basis that the injunction is saving lives.

Mr Justice Chamberlain
There has been this further information about how the government is going to provide 'cover', as it's put, for the political consequences of bringing people to the UK by a statement that does not tell the whole truth to Parliament?

Cathryn McGahey KC
It would tell as much of the truth as possible.

Mr Justice Chamberlain
I'm starting to doubt myself - am I going bonkers, because it really is £6billion? [Later confirmed to be £7billion]

Cathryn McGahey KC
It is…Yes it's a very large amount of public money being spent without currently any information to the public.

During that time there was a sinister shift in ministers’ reasoning for keeping the public in the dark. The Government’s lawyers told Mr Justice Chamberlain that it wanted to put an “agreed narrative” in place to explain away the arrivals of large numbers of Afghans – in other words, lie to the public.

How very sinister….

To be fair to Afghans some of them will have fought with the Western forces against the Taliban so would likely have been killed now the Taliban are back in power there had they stayed

These Afghan families are at risk because they worked under the Queen's Colours and not trafficked in small boats with no papers or background details.

If they don't qualify as legitimate refugees with a connection to Britain, then who on earth would qualify?

So why lie about it?

If they're already in the UK safely why not say "we are granting asylum to people who deserve it" openly and honestly?

As we have with people from Hong Kong, and Ukraine and elsewhere.

The most disturbing part of this story isn't that people were granted asylum, its that the government sought to lie about it and make telling the truth an offence.