Speeches by Thomas.

“Thank you.”

“That is really useful to hear. A final question from me: I want to get your sense of how your suggestions to the Department and the DARR team in September have been received? Has there been any response or interaction from Government?”

“Talk us through what happens next. You think, “Okay, this is part of a bigger breach.” How do you find out? We now know there were 19,000 names. How did it emerge? Give us a sense of what you did and who you spoke to.”

“There is an interesting balance there, which we are grateful for. Dr Curtis, you spoke about space earlier. In the context of what Matthew mentioned about a new look at our relationship with America, it was reported over the last week—I don’t know whether it is true—that the MoD has stopped sharing intelligence in the …”

“I do.”

“You have touched on previous efforts at defence reform. What do you think are some of the problems and aspects that the current MoD needs to respond to that maybe are new in this contemporary operating environment? You have touched already on space, but could you expand on that? I will start with Matthew.”

“Is it not fair to say that the MoD has created a cyber force?”

“12. What steps his Department is taking to help improve rehabilitation outcomes for people with unspent convictions.”

“In my first surgery as an MP in Plymouth, I met a constituent who had received an unspent conviction for a one-off crime committed 34 years ago when they were a child. Since then they have served their time, turned their life around and been a constructive member of society, in employment for 12 years. In 2022, they we…”

“Secrecy is quite a burden to have. You had that for a long period of time, which you are used to as journalists because you protect your sources. So you have some element of secrecy anyway. However, the judge in the judgment in July of this year said that it was a “remarkable” feature of this whole situation that there…”

“Do either of you want to comment on that?”

“I want to come back for a second to the wider question we were discussing a minute ago about resettlement of Afghans, and Afghans from particular units. As we ascertained earlier, there is an overlap with this data breach. Holly, you reported in July this year about the inquiry that two judges reported on into some of …”

“Which we do not know.”

“There is an overlap.”

“From some perspectives, it is not so easy to separate them, because ultimately we are talking about whether we can resettle people from one country. But I take your point.”

“Larisa, when you reported on this, you specified that some of the cases that were being reviewed, which had been rejected, were from Afghan special forces—is that right?”

“It is certainly shameful. I am just wondering whether it is incompetent or deliberate. Sam, you look like you would like to comment.”

“Do you put that down to bureaucratic incompetence, or do you think that is deliberate?”

“You have reported on the MoD saying that it was reviewing some cases of rejected applications from certain Afghans.”

“Larisa, are you able to suggest any reasons we might look into as to why it is becoming, seemingly from the reporting, harder and there is less of a willingness on the part of the UK Government to resettle certain Afghans in the UK?”