What do we know about the cost of the secret Afghan scheme?published at 11:33 British Summer Time
Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist
Image source, EPAWe’re looking into the Afghan data leak story, which was revealed yesterday after a court ruling was lifted.
The previous Conservative government set up a resettlement scheme – the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) for Afghans affected by the data breach and its existence was kept secret until yesterday, when it was closed by the government.
There have been various claims about how much it could end up costing the government, with figures as high as £7bn. We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of them.
Defence Secretary John Healey told the Commons yesterday that the £7bn figure “was a previous estimate”, covering not only the ARR, but the “total cost of all government Afghan schemes for the entire period in which they may operate”.
He gave a lower overall figure of “between £5.5 billion and £6 billion” because of “policy decisions”. He didn’t specify what those were but earlier in July two other Afghan schemes were closed.
The specific cost of bringing 900 people and 3,600 family members to the UK under the ARR scheme is about £400m, with similar additional costs for those who still to arrive, Healey said.
But this does not include the legal costs of keeping the case out of the media, nor does it include potential compensation claims by Afghans whose lives may have been put at risk by the data leak.