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Lord Coaker (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 16 July 2025

Debate

Afghanistan

Contribution

I thank the noble and gallant Lord for this important question, which the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith and Lady Goldie, also asked, as to how on earth this could have happened. First of all, it was really important to ascertain whether there was any criminal or malign intent. The previous Government were quite right to refer that to the police for investigation. As I have already said, the police found that there was no evidence of any criminal or malign intent. Alongside that, it was referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The answer to the noble and gallant Lord’s question is the whole of the statement that the Information Commissioner’s Office made yesterday about its investigation into what happened, and into the way in which the Ministry of Defence has changed many of the processes that it had in place and its management arrangements to ensure as far as possible that we would not see that again. The importance of that is the independence of the Information Commissioner’s Office looking at what the MoD was doing, rather than the MoD marking its own homework.

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