The government could face a legal bill topping £1 billion in compensation to victims of the Afghan data breach scandal. Thousands of people’s lives were put at risk of Taliban reprisals when their names were accidentally leaked in 2022.

UK defence minister John Healey has told MPs the Ministry of Defence’s data leak was a “serious departmental error” that was “one of many data losses related to the Arap [Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy] scheme during this period”.

Operation Rubific eventually saw 24,000 Afghans relocated to the UK, at a cost of billions of pounds to the taxpayer, in the "biggest covert evacuation operation in peacetime", said The Spectator.