Speeches by Jopp.

“They say, “It’s enormous and is going to cost billions of quid.” What was your reaction?”

“I have a very short question: did you ever entertain the idea that the Afghan data breach might have been done deliberately?”

“You have characterised the judges’ decision making as increasingly activist. You have also said that they were also getting secret information from elsewhere.”

“I see, so it was about getting them to the front of the queue.”

“Your last remarks remind me of the great bit of advice that the higher headquarters is always an ass, and sometimes you have to know when to stroke the ass’s ears. It sounds to me like your officials had massively underestimated the gravity of the situation. As a result, you took quite a time-limited approach, wanting …”

“We may come to this later but, on balance—given the numbers of people who were subsequently allowed in, the vetting, and the difficulty you had of getting ground truth—do you think that we probably did let some Taliban in? As you know, having been there and having served there, being “in the Taliban” is a pretty vague …”

“You gave a very clear answer to Mr Twigg’s question about when you found out. You turn up at a new job, and on the first day in work, they say, “There is this massive secret we have been keeping from the country.””

“I do not know whether the Secretary of State gives instructions to his lead counsel on issues as important as this. Are you aware of the motivation for suggesting that the Speaker be read in? Was it so that, in some way at least, Parliament would “know”, in inverted commas? Or was it to thwart his granting an urgent qu…”

“And also, it sets the conditions, were we ever to do expeditionary operations in someone else’s country in the future. It is not just a short-term thing.”

“No. Ideally we would win, so they could stay.”

“I have a quotation from something you have written, and I just want you to contextualise it, because it does not make a lot of sense to me: “The suggestion I was driving a new entitlement for those not eligible for ARAP or ACRS but affected by the breach is untrue”. Did you say that?”

“The benefits of a polo match.”

“I am intrigued by the ever-increasing demand signal being set by the judges. We have heard from others this morning that, politically, this is now starting to give you a problem because of the pressure and the juxtaposition with people who have come here illegally being in accommodation and the way that drives up rent …”

“But, in effect, you were driving for a new entitlement—not ARAP or ACRS, but for people who were put in jeopardy by the breach.”

“Rubific?”

“A very short question, to which there will hopefully be a very short answer. Were we paying Pakistan to accommodate people there while that bit of the valve worked itself out?”

“Going down a level from the institutional frustration and the butting of heads between the Home Office and the MoD, would it be right to say that the Domestic and Economic Affairs Committee of the Cabinet had wanted, basically, to limit any extension to the numbers eligible for resettlement to the lowest possible numbe…”

“Lastly, in your subsequent conversations, in your open-source research or in conversations with journalists, have you come across anyone asserting that a super-injunction has been served on the Speaker of the House of Commons before, or was this unique?”

“Did you say that the judge and your lead counsel came up with this plan themselves, not under your direction?”

“Yes.”