Speeches by Lewell.

“On what basis, though? What advice were you getting that, in that short space of time, the situation would have changed?”

“On the day before the general election, you decided to appeal the High Court’s decision to lift the injunction. Can you tell us why that was?”

“Do you think the right people have been held accountable for the data breach and its consequences?”

“We now know that the breach involved risk to life for thousands of Afghans and cost the UK public purse hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds. Continuing on my colleagues’ theme, how were you assured during your time in office that the Department genuinely got it, understood the impact of the breach and had …”

“I meant that there was anger about the pets getting out.”

“That was in total desperation.”

“There was a lot of anger about that.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but the Chair is conscious of time. In any organisation, if you make an error on this scale and are not held to account, you are likely to make it again.”

“It is a bit like becoming an MP.”

“So that would be how you would reconcile—I know you told the “Today” programme in July this year that you do not think the injunction should have carried on as long as it did, but what you are saying is that you were making that judgment, which your successor did as well. I am just trying to pin you down on—”

“Why?”

“But they could have been doing that, presumably, on the premise of what you have just said: the 50%.”

“You can see how it is confusing to us, though. You are saying that you thought it should have probably been lifted in the autumn and you were constantly reviewing it, yet you applied for an indefinite extension.”

“Just to revisit that, you say, “One more turn of the wheel,” and in answer to my earlier question you said that you thought it would happen around the autumn. Why, then, did you apply for an indefinite extension in May, instead of just a temporary extension?”

“Was it not an option to apply for just a temporary extension?”

“The point I am trying to make is that, if the right people have not been held to account, it does not negate things like this happening in the future. From what I am hearing from you, you do not think that everyone has been held to account. I do not want to paraphrase you, but it sounds like you are saying that not eve…”

“I have lots of constituents who still do not know whether their wider family are alive or not. That haunts me. Do you think the Department actually understands that? I know that you left not long after the breach became known, but was the culture there that people understood the wider implications of all that? Did peop…”

“Going back to your exchange with my colleague Mike Martin, last week we were trying to get the CDS pinned down on articulating the threat so that the public are aware and you can make those arguments that you talked about. That seemed to be what you were trying to say: that stuff needs to be kept secret, but that we ne…”

“I think you get the point that I am making, though: you applied for an indefinite extension, even though you did not want an indefinite extension.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her statement, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) for the leadership that he has shown on this. It is right that we have a pause, but the Minister will know how distressing this is for the families, and about the emotional and physical toll that going back and …”