Speeches by Pollard.

“My sense of this is, having inherited a situation where a number of parliamentarians were read on, that that work had already been done. Those people had already been read on. The legal application of the super-injunction had been applied to those individuals, and that was the current sense.”

“I will turn to Dominic to give some of the detailed recommendations, but broadly it was apparent for those who were following the Triples over a number of years—before the Triples review started—that the data required to demonstrate that the Triples had indeed worked alongside UK forces in Afghanistan was not being cor…”

“I suspect there was someone. That might be a question for Dominic. We would have to have kept a record of all those people who the super-injunction had been applied to, but that was not a long list that I was privy to—and nor was there a necessity for me to be.”

“Yes, what I am saying is that the previous Government had read on the Speaker and the Lord Speaker. In the event that a debate happened in the House of Commons, I think the previous Government made the decision, which I think was reasonable at the time, that in order to support the spirit of the super-injunction, there…”

“If it happened today and I was the Minister responsible, that would be a different thing, because I would have been in the room when those decisions were being taken. I am better able to comment on something that is happening today, rather than on something that happened when I was not the Minister and was not privy to…”

“The written evidence is the Government’s position on this.”

“My sense is that we have, yes. However, to answer your question fully and give you confidence on that, I will write to the Committee with the details, as per the Chair’s instruction earlier. We are not anticipating having operations in the same way as we have had in Afghanistan. However, we do work with partner forces …”

“I was not shown a full list of the people in the compartment, but broadly there was an understanding that this was a tightly held restriction. It was not a departmental compartment, so to speak; it was one required by the courts in terms of the risk of it. We could not acknowledge either that it existed or the contents…”

“Certainly, record keeping has improved considerably across defence in recent years. However, on the specific details, I am happy to write to the Committee.”

“The decision was taken by the Secretary of State to close the schemes with immediate notice, based on the information we had available to us at the time, which would have been informed by the Rimmer review. The review not only looked at the implications for the individuals on the dataset but gave an assessment of risk …”

“I am very happy to look into that.”

“During that period, I wrote to the Leader of the Opposition, inviting her to be read on. As you will recall from the time, it took a wee while to get a response to that, but we read her on ahead of the lifting of the super-injunction. And, just at the point of lifting the super-injunction, as part of a managed briefing…”

“At the time, the new shadow Defence Secretary, James Cartlidge, was a read-on Minister from the previous Administration, so that effectively mirrored the arrangement under which John Healey had been read on in opposition.”

“I will let Dominic talk about the full details, but our main objective in a planned lifting of the super-injunction—distinct from the “break glass” moment that Dominic spoke about earlier, where we would not be in control—was to be transparent about what had happened, to be clear with the affected individuals on the da…”

“The spirit of the super-injunction was that, due to the risk involved, only those individuals necessary for the protective action should be told about it. I was uncomfortable with the super-injunction; I think we all were in the Department—there was no one who was comfortable with this situation—and that led us, in tim…”

“It is hard for me to comment on the actions of a particular individual, because I will not be able to talk about individuals and anything around special forces; the Committee will know that that is difficult for me as a Minister. Broadly, the Triples review was necessary, and it identified that decisions had been taken…”

“I am certainly not accountable for, or able to comment on, the decisions relating to the initial data breach, because that happened under the last Government. I am responsible for how we responded to it from July 2024 onwards. In doing so, from July 2024, we took a steady set of measures: stabilising the schemes, which…”

“I am not privy to the decisions that the last Government made as to who they chose to read in on this.”

“Against this, not everyone has responded so far. We also know that within the cohort of eligible people, there is a cohort of people who I think we call non-progressives, in terms of not moving forward in the chain, who we have granted eligibility to but who are no longer corresponding with the Ministry of Defence. We …”

“I am happy to look at what that information is to check if it is appropriate for us to publish and share it with you. I will check if it is the right classification. I am happy to take that away.”