Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 10
54th Report - Afghanistan Response Route
Published 14 Nov 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
In August 2023, after it discovered the data breach, the Department reported the incident to the Metropolitan Police and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The police decided that no criminal investigation was necessary. The ICO decided that it was not in a position to conduct its own investigation at that time, because of the restrictions resulting from the super-injunction and the classification of much of the relevant material as Secret or Top Secret. Instead, the ICO decided to review, oversee and propose lines of investigation to the Department’s internal investigation team.20 The ICO found that, due to the urgency with which the Department was operating, there was “inherently some risk” it was having to take by sharing data externally. It also found that, at the time of the breach, the Department’s systems were not set up for this way of working, and the Department was working at pace due to its assessment that there was a clear threat to life.21
From: Public Accounts Committee, 54th Report - Afghanistan Response Route (HC 1391), 14 November 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifty-fourth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 14 January 2026).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Fifty-fourth report from Session 2024-26
Published 19 January 2026.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with four of the Committee's recommendations, including six-monthly updates on ARR resettlement from March 2026, and disagrees with the recommendation on separately capturing ARR costs.
- On updates, the government agrees to write to the Committee every six months from March 2026 until the ARR is complete, though it "may not always be possible to provide a precise breakdown by scheme".
- On the case working system, it agrees, stating the recommendation is implemented and that DACS (introduced in May 2022) addressed "many of the vulnerabilities", with the department "equipped with the right tools to minimise the risk" of a recurrence.
- On scrutiny, it agrees and gives a target date of Spring 2026. The Treasury will issue a Dear Accounting Officer letter on sharing information with the Comptroller and Auditor General in the event of a super-injunction.
- It disagrees on separate ARR costing, saying this would be "disproportionately complex and resource intensive", and instead offers an indicative cost allocation at the end of each financial year, included with the six-monthly updates.