Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 18
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)
The High Court and the Court of Appeal upheld the super-injunction in several subsequent private hearings and judgments between 2023 and 2025.43 The Department said that in September 2023, it expected that an injunction might be in place for at most, a few months.44 The issue could have been raised in Parliament while the super-injunction was in place, but was not publicly disclosed in the House of Commons.45 The Department said that Ministers made a judgment around balancing the risk to life and supporting the injunction by limiting those in the circle of knowledge to those who had an absolute need to know. Ministers decided to ‘read in’ 40 C&AG’s Report, para 10 41 C&AG’s Report, para 17 42 Q 28 43 C&AG’s Report, para 18 44 Q 31 45 C&AG’s Report, para 18 13 the Speaker, his Lords equivalent and the shadow Defence Secretary.46 We asked about the Department’s consideration of whether to read in the Chair of PAC and the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG). The Department said it had conversations with Ministers about reading in the Chairs of a small number of Select Committees, but in the end, the ministerial decision was not to do so.47
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.