Suella Braverman breaks silence on secret Afghan scheme in furious statement

Suella Braverman blasted the "outrageous" Afghan cover-up in a furious statement. The former home secretary insisted she tried to oppose the secret relocation scheme set up after a data leak of thousands of people seeking to flee Afghanistan following the return of the Taliban.

She hit out at the previous Tory government over the major breach, which was kept secret as a result of a super injunction imposed in 2023. In a post on X, Mrs Braverman said: "What has happened is outrageous and must never happen again.

"In all this disgraceful betrayal of the people by their own government, I feel only shame. I, and a handful of others, fought this: but we failed to stop it.

"This is why on election night last year I apologised for what we had got wrong. This is why I warned about the direction we were heading in back in 2023.

"The last Conservative government let you down. The cover-up was wrong, the super injunction was wrong, and the failure to stop unwanted mass immigration has been unforgivable.

"So, I am sorry: the Conservative government failed you and its leaders let you down. It wasn't good enough then. It's not good enough now."

She added: "This episode exposes everything wrong with the Westminster establishment. The state apparatus thinks it can hide its failures behind legal technicalities while ordinary people pay the price. I understand your anger, and I share it.

"The people who have run this country so badly need to take a long, hard look at themselves. Those responsible must be held accountable, and the system that enabled this cover-up must be dismantled."

Mrs Braverman highlighted how the relocation scheme was launched after she was ousted by then-PM Rishi Sunak in a row over the policing of pro-Palestine protests.

She added that the leak came from the Ministry of Defence, which was not her department.

She also warned that Afghan arrivals under the policy will be able to bring their families under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Mrs Braverman, who wants to quit the treaty, vowed that she will "have more to say about this soon".

A dataset of 18,714 who applied for the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) was released in February 2022 by a defence official who emailed a file outside authorised government systems.

The Ministry of Defence only became aware of the blunder when excerpts from the dataset were posted anonymously on a Facebook group in August 2023, and a superinjunction was granted at the High Court in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from finding out about the leak.

The breach led to the creation of a secret Afghan relocation scheme - the Afghanistan Response Route - in April 2024.

The scheme is understood to have cost around £400 million so far, with a projected final cost of about £850 million.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said sorry on behalf of her party for the leak.

"On behalf of the government and on behalf of the British people, yes, because somebody made a terrible mistake and names were put out there... and we are sorry for that," she told LBC.